THE BLOOMIN' BANDWAGON

By Danielle Egan 
 
One Ring to rule them all

Come on. Say it with me. I know you all know it. One Ring to rule them all.

What should have been written is something more along the lines of, One Elf to rule my heart.

Or at least, thats what would have been written, had anyone foreseen the astonishing popularity of the Elf prince from Mirkwood, Legolas Greenleaf. Thanks to the brilliant on-screen skills of actor Orlando Bloom in the December film Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, adolescent girls planet-wide are going Tolkien for this blonde-haired blue-eyed babe from Middle Earth.

My own theory that this was merely because of Blooms devastating good looks was shot down when the 25-year-old admitted that when hes out on his own in public, nobody recognizes him.

So as not to be proved completely wrong, I revised my theory to clarify that they like his good looks in the moviein other words, his beautiful long blonde hair and his big blue eyes, neither of which is natural (he wore a wig and contacts for the film). Apparently the brown-eyed brunette has no trouble banging around London in his current close-cropped do. Honestly I dont get bothered by people, he says. I dont get any of that.

How long that will last now that his new movie Black Hawk Down is out is certainly debatable.

Ill be curious to see how many of the adolescent girls who saw The Fellowship Of The Ring five times for no other reason than the fact that Elf-boy was in it decide to see Black Hawk Down for the same reason.

Ill also be laughing hysterically if they do.

Black Hawk Down, while an amazing, touching, and truly brilliant film, is nevertheless two hours worth of bullets and gore, and Blooms character is out of the running in about the first five minutes. NOT your typical chick flick. I have a feeling that, while it may be the number one film on the charts this week, the teenyboppers wont be back just to see Blackburn fall out of his helicopter a second time. (Although who knows? Josh Hartnett and Ewan McGregor both have highly devoted fan bases as well.)

And what about Blooms upcoming movies? Although I admit I have heard nothing about his film Ali G In Da House except that he is co-starring with his good friend, German actor André Schneider, Im wondering how the girls will react to Lullaby Of Clubland, which is about the Asian gang drug underground, or Deed Poll, in which Blooms character first murders his parents and then sleeps with his sister. All three movies are due out later this year.

Im under the impression that Bloom takes on not the roles that are most likely to sell, but the roles which will be most likely to challenge him as an actor. Kudos to him, if this is so; its what will keep him from being yet another flash-in-the-pan Hollywood pretty-boy whose career is over as soon as the girls have moved on to the next teen phenomenon. Its my firm beliefand never have I more hoped I am correctthat he will have a long and extremely varied career.

Because dont get me wrong: cynic though I may be, I must admit that I, too, have jumped on the Orlando Bloom bandwagon. I may not have his face plastered all over my bedroom walls, and my notebooks may not be covered with doodles reading, I love Orli, and I may not hyperventilate if I happen to catch him on television, but I am an Orlando Bloom fan. I have a great and ever-deepening respect for this obviously talented young man, and his performance in The Fellowship Of The Ring was nothing short of brilliant.

However I do feel it necessary to acknowledge that not all the teenage girls who saw Fellowship multiple times did it just for Legolas Greenleaf.

Some of them did it for Frodo. (Just kidding.)

I was in Seattle recently to visit a friend and we went to see The Fellowship Of The Ring in the citys posh downtown theater, the Cinerama. Standing proudly at the head of the line (which stretched down two city blocks) was a tall young woman with very long hair, which she had pulled into a halfback and braided just the way the Elves do in the film. She was also wearing a long skirt and a cloak.

Three guesses as to her favorite character, I muttered to my friend, and the first two dont count.

To my slight embarrassment she overheard me, but in the course of the ensuing conversation I discovered that the girl, whose name was Margaet Conlon, was not remotely what I would call a teenybopper. Though she was only eighteen, she had been reading Tolkiens books for twelve years and was a genuinely intelligent young person. We talked for a good half hour about her fascination with Legolas, but she never even called him attractive, much less hot. It was a discussion of personality, not physicality.

Maybe theres hope for female adolescents after all.

Then again, considering the number of OMG!!! Orli is SO sexy! I luv him soooooooo much! emails Ive gotten since publishing this article maybe not.