Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Age of the Hobbits'
This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:
“Age of the Hobbits”
A classic example of a tick hitching a ride on the back of a big dog, “Age of the Hobbits” (due out on DVD Tuesday) has absolutely nothing to do with J.R.R. Tolkien or with Peter Jackson’s hotly anticipated new franchise film due to storm the multiplexes on Friday.
Instead, it’s the cheeky work of B-movie production company The Asylum (maker of cheapo knockoffs such as “The Da Vinci Treasure,” “Snakes on a Train,” “Transmorphers,” “Titanic II” and scores of others). Obviously squeezing through a legal loophole to employ the term Hobbits, this picture clearly hopes to piggyback on the buzz created by Jackson’s Tolkien juggernaut.
Apparently, Hobbits were not just a Tolkien invention but were also the name of a real pygmy tribe that inhabited the Indonesian jungles thousands of years ago.
So, “Age of the Hobbits” is set 12,000 years ago in Indonesia where a band of pint-sized, peace-loving “tree people” (they’re never referred to as Hobbits in the film) are attacked and enslaved by the evil Java Men, a horde of dragon-riding cannibals.
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