Reviewed By

Christopher Armstead
The Asylum makes these mockbuster movies, these movies they make are rarely good, and just enough people see them to keep the studio above water but yet every once in a while a big studio gets all pissy and wants to sue my friends at The Asylum.  Today's big studio with a bug up their butts is Warner Brothers who filed an infringement suit against the clowns at The Asylum and their movie 'Age of the Hobbits'.  Apparently this twelve dollar movie
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infringes on their mega billion budget movie 'The Hobbit'.  It doesn't, not really, considering I don't remember hearing the word 'hobbit' one single time in the movie, plus I don't even think Tolkien invent the word but there it is.  Now this movie is called 'Clash of the Empires' or 'Lord of the Elves' or something which doesn't make it any better, and not names we're going to use, but come on WB, leave my people alone!

Here's one thing 'Age of the Hobbits' has over eighteen hours worth 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Hobbit' movies.  With Christopher Judge as the star, this movie now has more Black people in it than all of those other Peter Jackson movies combined.  And the Orcs don't count.

Regardless, this movie is about the tree people, the rock people and the giants.  The tree people are a happy little bunch living in hollow trees, until the crazed, fanged, cannibal minded rock people and their flying… hell if I know what those things are, but they look way too big to be able fly, no matter what kind of wings you stick on them… come-a-callin'.  They kidnap the tree people including Tree Mom, heck if I remember the actual names of these characters, and take them to the rock village in the mountains.  Now Tree Dad, Tree Son and Tree Daughter have to make the perilous trip across the village of the Giants to make it to the Rock People abode and save Tree Mom. 

Eventually on this adventure Tree Dad helps the giant Amthar (Judge) out of a jam and now the tree family has a friend 4 Lyfe!  In fact Amthar thinks his giant people, who are just regular sized dudes truth be told, should help the tree people, but the giant chief is kind of a dick, for lack of a better word, and says 'NO!'.  No worries though because Amthar, the lady warrior Laylan (Bail Ling), along with a couple of Disposable Dudes will help the Tree People get their folks back before they get eaten up.

This trip to the lair of the completely insane Rock People will be perilous one.  Giant spiders, giant poisonous lizards… and I'm thinking them lizards being giants is bad enough… and not to mention the Rock People themselves with their razor teeth, wacky rituals, inability to speak legibly, the lack of women except for their lunatic leader and their annoying tendency to eat tiny people.  What can a couple of midgets, a hot chick, a big dude who will be incapacitated for most of the movie, and a couple of disposable dudes do against a force like this?  Kick that ass.  That's what they can do.  Take that J.R. Tolkien!

Wanna know one of the things that's good about director Joseph L. Lawson's film 'Age of the Hobbits'?  Christopher Judge's voice, that's what.  This cat can say just about anything and make it sound legitimately important.  So either the dialog was remarkably better for this movie, compared to what I'm used to at this dollar range, or Christopher Judge saying stuff just made it sound that much better.  Another thing that was above board for 'Age of the Hobbits' were the special effects.  Now to be honest, since this movie was shot outdoors in Cambodia, most of the set design was done by God, and might I say The Lord did an especially good job on this one.  But God's design aside, the few CGI effects that were in this one were pretty effective, such as the flying… whatever those things were… or the spiders or the lizards, they all integrated well in to the scenery and looked very good.

Now what wasn't so good in this movie, and was actually borderline bizarre, was the voice dubbing.  On one side of the spectrum we have Christopher Judge's deep voiced, panty dropping dulcet tones, but on the other end we have this combination of ill-synchronized, cackling, bad matching vocals used for our locals.  I get these people probably can't speak English, and if they can, it probably isn't very good, but surely we could've done just a little better than this.  It was distracting.  I'm just glad they didn't voice dub for Bai Ling.  And another thing that might've been slightly disturbing, that being that the Giant Amthar and the dwarfian Tree Daughter looked like they might have something going on.  Even though I'm sure Tree Daughter is an adult, she's still like three feet tall.  They just appeared to be biologically incompatible is all.

But was the movie any good though?  Well… let's just say it grew on me.  It all started off a little suspect, like most movies from The Asylum tend to do, but the story being told in this one at least followed a logical progression, which in itself is a minor miracle, the narrative also had a steady crescendo before coming to its respectable conclusion. 

If you don't regularly watch movies such as 'Age of the Hobbits' then there is little chance that you will enjoy it.  It is flawed and the flaws are numerous, but if you are watching this with your modern b-movie thinking cap on, then 'Age of the Hobbits' isn't so bad.  I'd even go as far as to call it tolerable.
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