Watch Rise of the Fellowship For Free

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

RISE OF THE FELLOWSHIP is another indie comedy that owes its existence to LORD OF THE RINGS. The central characters are a group of geeks who are into cosplay and the like and who plan to attend a Lord of the Rings-themed convention. As a film, it's packed with the usual unfunny humour and bad acting; it's worthless even for like-minded fans such as myself.

The script for this movie set me on edge. It reinforced every superficial stereotype about gamers, its characters were extremely shallow, both the heroes and villains, and it used obvious, cheap gimmicks to push the audience's buttons. The bullies were cartoonish stereotypes, the good guys were cartoonish nerds. The notion that the very attractive girl nerd would associate with them was laughable. The acting was also poor, I didn't believe any of the characters at all and had to stop watching because I was cringing too much at it.This movie was literally disgusting to watch, not because of what occurred to the characters but for the way the movie creators tried to manipulate the audience. It is a totally paint by numbers effort. Do not bother. Watch The Guild on Youtube instead. If you honestly like this movie, I honestly feel sorry for you.

Online games don't interest me, so I didn't expect to like Rise of the Fellowship. What a pleasant surprise! It's well acted and well written. As a Tolkien fan, I enjoyed the LOTR references, but there are other pleasures. Your kids will enjoy it, too.Each of the lead actors does a very good job, especially Justin Moe, Jayme Bell, and Cole Matson. Wolf Sherrill's performance as Baba Melvin is a delight.The sly humor of the script drew me in. These Tolkien fans don't take themselves too seriously in this affectionate play on the LOTR films. It's well paced and has charm. The resolution is neat and satisfying.Disclosure: I only watched this because a friend is married to one of the writers. But as I watched, I moved from curiosity to pride. Who cares about 4 teen gamers? You will when you watch this well told tale.

I hadn't heard about this until a friend told me about it, and at first the information and trailers I'd seen had been confusing. was it called RISE OF THE FELLOWSHIP, or FELLOWS HIP? Was it, as the first title (and one of the trailers I'd seen) suggested, an Asylum ripoff of a certain bunch of Middle Earth and Hobbit movies? If so, then the synopsis I'd read, making it a contemporary story about a bunch of gamers playing at Lord of the Rings, was wrong. As it turned out, it was the latter, which I was much more inclined to watch. But I didn't get past the first thirty minutes. The direction and execution of it is very good, adapting the look of Peter Jackson's movies and music to reflect the experiences of the lead characters, reminding me of the D&D episode of NBC's Community, one of their best episodes. But the acting was poor throughout, all Over The Top effusive projection, reminiscent of some bad kid's show (the guy who played the store owner was particularly guilty of this). The writing is a bit too expository (there must be better ways of showing that the lead character has a brother rather than the brother having to pretty much say "I'm your brother"), and the idea of the entire universe being against you might have been more appealing when I was a teenager, but it seems more trite now. In comparison, I preferred the movie Zero Charisma, also about a gamer but not painting him as a paragon of good, and when the world seems against him, there's actually some legitimate reasons for it. I may return to it and give it another go, but not now.