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Menzel’s movies, in their wit and subversive romance, were born of the grisly era that ran from Munich ’38 to the Prague Spring; the Czechs knew tyranny from both sides: the violence and war delirium of the Nazis and then the dead hand of Soviet rule with its chilling paranoia and humourless, clodhopping bureaucracy.

The creators of “Playing With Fire,” a clodhopping comedy about California wildfire “smoke jumpers,” built in little pauses after many of the film’s sight gags and verbal jokes, presumably to accommodate audience laughter.

For the opening 55 minutes at the Emirates this was a bitty, fun meandering game, an odd mix of superb moments of skill, bruising collisions and clodhopping errors.

It’s much easier to put aside doctrinal differences and work together when an attorney at the lectern sounds like a clodhopping amateur trying out for the moot court team.

"There are clodhopping idiots, treated in a really down-to-earth, anti-heroic way. In Tolkien's own fiction, he creates totally different moods. The hobbits are very relatable, very friendly; and then the elves are much more remote."