Waxing Satirical About Middle Earth (Bored Of The Rings - The Harvard Lampoon)

Member Name: CaptainD

Product:	Bored Of The Rings - The Harvard Lampoon
Date:	08/05/05 (176 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Often funny and sometimes hilarious

Disadvantages: Humour doesn't always work and is sometimes "too American" for British readers

Bored of the Rings is, unsurprisingly, a parody of Lord of the Rings, by The Harvard Lampoon. (The authors later went on to establish National Lampoon). It's apparently been around in America for three decades and more, but has only fairly recently been widely available in the UK (off the back of the films' success, no doubt).

I’m sure there are some Middle Earth fans who may view this book as tantamount to blasphemy, but quite frankly they should chill out. This isn’t satire at its absolute best, but it is done with a deep knowledge (and according to the preface, a deep love) of the great book itself.

A neat little paperback weighing in a £6.99 and 228 pages, it's slightly unfortunate that one of the in-jokes of Bromosel (Boromir) looking at the page numbers to see when he's going to cop it doesn't work so well as the numbers are not the same as the original book! But I suppose the joke was still funny despite this!

It can’t be accused of being subtle; all of the characters names have been changes (Legolas becomes Legolamb, Gimli becomes Gimlet, etc). One very funny aspect is the fact the Merry and Pippin (Can’t check on all the names ‘cos I’ve lent the book to someone!) speak almost in unison whenever they’re together, and basically repeat what everyone else says. Obviously the action is great abridged since it’s a fraction of the size of Lord of the Rings itself, but most of the memorable scenes are there.

The one problem with the book is, to the British audience at least, that much of the humour is... well, very American. I didn't understand some of the references to various institutions etc, which would probably have been instantly recognisable to American readers, but which British readers wouldn’t know about – which obviously destroys the humour of that scene for us Brits! But this doesn't detract greatly from the overall enjoyment of reading the book, as the humour is largely surreal, satire, or (in my opinion the least funny aspect) smutty – lots of jokes about Elvish maidens etc, which aren’t all that funny to begin with and are mightily over-used. While not all of the humour works, much of it does, and some is hilarious. (Tom Bombadil fans particularly should look out for the book's take on his personality - spot on! It goes some way to making amends for him not appearing in the first film.) The best scene for laughs is the Vee-ates (Ents) march on Saruman, led by the Jolly Green Giant.

In short, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't find SOMETHING funny in this book. Although I do think you would need to have read Lord of the Rings once in order to really appreciate it (or at the very least seen the films), and you would also need to generally like parodies and / or surreal humour. I personally found it good but not brilliant - I'm glad to have read it, but it will be a while before I read it again. It’s a shame the authors didn’t cut out the smut and put in more genuinely funny material – it reads like they just got lazy in some parts. Or maybe they find the fiftieth (yawn) reference to the sweaty thighs of an Elvish maiden uproariously funny?

It’s a good read if you like Middle Earth and have a warped sense of humour, but (like the last film), it could and should have been better.

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