Tolkien
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: May 10, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
25
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMay 3, 2019
Hoult brings a quiet, romantic intensity to the young Tolkien (pronounced ‘Tolkeen’, who knew?), Lily Collins does a lot with a little as his first love Edith, and the Hobbit horde will gobble up all of the easter-egg references peppered throughout the movie. Read full review
70
Film ThreatAlan NgMay 10, 2019
As far as its storytelling, it’s good but rarely rises to the level of inspiring. Fans of Tolkien are going to find a nice, comfortable place in this film, but walk away feeling like they could have dug deeper into this life. Read full review
70
IGNRosie KnightMay 3, 2019
Tolkien may disappoint fans looking for a LOTR origin but will please those who like stories of art, love & friendship. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 3, 2019
Handsomely made in the customarily fastidious style of most period biographical dramas, Tolkien is strongly served by Hoult, who, after four X-Men outings (and a supporting role in last year's The Favourite), demonstrates that it's high time he moved on from that sort of thing to more interesting and challenging dramatic characterizations. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiMay 8, 2019
The performances are wonderful, especially Hoult and Collins, who exude a charming chemistry, and fans of both the books and the films will find pleasure in this look at the early life of the man whose work still influences artists to this day. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 13, 2019
More like the dramatization of an Encyclopedia Britannica entry than a fully rendered movie, Tolkien provides details about the fantasy author’s life and tries to explore his motivations and influences but loses sight of the character in the process. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMay 10, 2019
As an origin story, Tolkien, has its moments of clarity and emotion. Some of it is oversimplified, even misguided. But the film cares about its subject, and cares about finding ways to portray "things that are good and days that are good to spend." Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonMay 9, 2019
Yes, Tolkien is a little on-the-nose. But there is also an undeniable appeal to the life-art allusions that drive this earnest movie, which is handsomely mounted, well-cast, and well-acted. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 8, 2019
Tolkien gives us the passing of a vanished England and the loss of a generation but not quite enough about what was won, by him for us, nor the mystery of how he won it. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicSamantha IncorvaiaMay 9, 2019
Director Dome Karukoski guides the actors well with a perfectly British script containing dry, witty humor. However, the movie leaves one longing for a little more. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 2, 2019
This is a very male world and perhaps the inner life of Edith remains a mystery (as perhaps it might have been for Tolkien), but its earnestness and idealism are refreshing. Read full review
60
EmpireLiz BeardsworthMay 1, 2019
Karukoski’s entertaining film boasts flair and narrative ambition, but ultimately fails to completely break free of its traditional biopic frame. Read full review
58
Original-CinKaren GordonMay 9, 2019
If you can accept its modest aims, Tolkien is quietly enjoyable on its own merits. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerMay 6, 2019
The real model here, of course, is "Shakespeare In Love," but that movie was also a comedy, while Tolkien is as reverent and moist-eyed as a Peter Jackson goodbye scene. Read full review
50
The PlaylistAndrew BundyMay 18, 2019
Tolkien is an unfortunately typical biopic riddled with obvious influences and ham-fisted thematic hypocrisy, but it is effective in capturing the moral consequences key to the humanity of Tolkien’s masterpiece. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 13, 2019
Why do people keep making films about writers? Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedMay 9, 2019
You watch along as it unravels with the tempo of a funeral dirge, and before you check your watch, you realize you’re already bored to death. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 9, 2019
The result is a well-acted, competently made, utterly tedious bore of a film lacking in creative spark, unwilling to take chances and determined to grind Tolkien through the muck and the blood of war and death at the expense of providing much insight into his creative process. Read full review
50
The New York TimesGlenn KennyMay 9, 2019
Tolkien manages several scenes of credible emotional delicacy. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Brad WheelerMay 8, 2019
Stately, handsome and ferociously romantic, the new biopic of British high-fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, though there is some excellent tea drinking to be had. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 8, 2019
Tolkien mopes between the dry way stations of the man’s biography, like the dullish opening chapter of a promising Masterpiece Theatre. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 7, 2019
There is a kind of historical British movie — Tolkien is one of them — that almost feels as if the subject were incidental. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartMay 7, 2019
Would it have been tacky to visually play up the connection between Tolkien’s harrowing experiences on the WWI battlefield and his depiction of Mordor in the books? Perhaps. Beyond the briefest of allusions, Karukoski tastefully leaves that to the imagination. But this — like much of the film — is a tastefulness that induces sleepiness. Tolkien’s estate was not supportive of this film, understandably: The legendary author’s work is memorial enough. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 7, 2019
Too often Tolkien lumbers up to its big moments, such as the preposterous climax involving the title character scrambling around the western front, calling out his schoolmate’s name. Fact or fiction isn’t the issue. Either way it plays like hokum. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 7, 2019
What Tolkien offers instead is a picturesque, amber-soaked balm for armchair Anglophiles: the manners and mores, the crisp witticisms and stirring, stiff-upper-lip sentiments. These pleasures aren’t negligible. But neither are they a substitute for a genuinely cinematic window into a genius’ mind. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 6, 2019
The movie is a capable and attractive enough biopic, if also less than riveting cinema. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 3, 2019
While it still dilutes Tolkien’s memory by molding his life to the narrow dimensions of a middle-brow feature that’s too safe for the arthouse and too small for the multiplex, at least it does so in a sincere attempt to trace the etymology of Tolkien’s work, and to emphasize that where stories come from can be as meaningful as where they take us. Read full review
40
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 10, 2019
A bit of a stiff as cinema, rich in atmospherics but starved for the human spark that might uncover the man behind the myth. Read full review
40
The AtlanticDavid SimsMay 9, 2019
This is a biopic so fearful that audiences won’t get the connections it’s drawing that it depicts a CGI dragon stalking the battlefields of the Somme. The result doesn’t rise above the insight of a Wikipedia page. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMay 8, 2019
It's an oddly inert film that suffers from its lack of focus on the stories that stand as Tolkien's chief literary contributions. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeMay 5, 2019
There are moments that catch – a cafe date between Tolkien and his future wife (Lily Collins) is one, and a knockout scene with the mother of his closest friend is another – but for the most part this is stolid film-making that lacks the imagination and creativity of its subject. Read full review
40
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 3, 2019
Despite the best efforts of its committed young cast, and especially a game (if suspiciously old-looking) Nicholas Hoult as Tolkien in his late teens and early twenties, it’s a plodding and polite portrayal that holds few surprises. Read full review
40
VarietyAndrew BarkerMay 3, 2019
The film – stately, well-acted, and ultimately unsubstantial – dilutes its considerable charms with hoary literary biopic conventions, and then risks strangling them entirely with its reductively literal takes on the vagaries of artistic inspiration. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 1, 2019
Well-informed, enlightening writing on Tolkien’s life and creative process is hardly scarce. But his genius stems from his scholarship, which doesn’t obviously lend itself to cinema, even with Derek Jacobi on hand as a professor-cum-mentor fruitily declaiming in Gothic as he potters around the quad. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineDerek SmithMay 3, 2019
The film preaches of the love of creative freedom, yet finds no original form of expression of its own. Read full review
33
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiMay 3, 2019
If you were trying to produce a parody of what a Tolkien biopic would look like, you’d get the exact same film.
30
ScreenCrushMatt SingerMay 9, 2019
None of the life we see J.R.R. Tolkien live in the film illuminates his great works of art — or even makes for a particularly compelling tale. Read full review
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