Ringers: Lord of the Fans (2004)

Well, this was certainly disappointing. LOTR being one of the many sources of my eternal geekiness as well as movies-obsession, I was [i][u]really[/u][/i] looking foward to a fun (maybe scary??) light documentary about the crazy fans around the world. Unfortunately, the film really didn't seem to have any idea what it WAS about.
It spent the vast majority of the time reciting well-covered history about what the books were about, when and where they were published, etc. Every great once in a while it popped in a snippet of a fan quote choosing their favorite character or why they liked the movies and then would go back to repeating still or stock footage while slowly printing short quotes over it, or talking about whether the books popularity was waxing or waning somewhere in the world. For every fun fact (like footage of Hobbiton, USA in California showing a [i]tiny[/i] bit of its tour), there are 12 Austin Powers-esque lava lamp-shadow montages to stretch time between scenes, apparently continuing to demonstrate the devotion to Tolkien during the hippie period, even though we had passed well into the '70s and, then, '80s and so on.
The narration is dry and slow; again, it seems like they just couldn't find anything to fill the time so he compensates by droning.
And for the love of God, can anyone explain to me why the entire merchandising for 2 generations of LOTR is represented by a horribly embarrassing [i][u]mariachi [/u][/i]song?!?
I didn't even get to see any really bizarre fan devotion; there was [b]no[/b] footage of conventions, the inside of no one's house collection, no weddings, etc, etc.
The saddest part is I don't think I actually learned a [u]single[/u] thing. So, while it was lacking severely in it's intended subject matter (the fans), it didn't manage to make up for it with [i][u]any[/u][/i] kind of deeply researched documentary about the author, the filmmaking or any other single aspect. There WERE some entertaining bits, a couple of cute antecdotes and we [i]did [/i]get to add Hobbiton onto our intented vacation to Vancouver in a few years for the Olympics....so I was tempted to give it a nudge over to the positive with a '6'. But for something I would never watch again, even as a TV special, I just can't. Come on, people, there are MILLIONS of people here to interview, film and follow and there have been for decades; [i]surely[/i] you could have come up with 80 or 90 minutes of entertainment.
Sigh....maybe somebody will try again later and really do it right.