Rating: 
Summary: fantastic animation and an artistic vision
Review: You really have to be a fan of Bakshi to truly appreciate this. His style of animation is not for everyone. This was the first truly serious adaptation of the books and will always have a nostalgic place in my heart. It captures a visual quality which matched the pace and movement of the story. The characters in this film set the standard for many live action fantasy films after it. Its well worth watching and owning.
Rating: 
Summary: Please Note: THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS THE ANIMATED HOBBIT!!
Review: I purchased this DVD with the thought that it fit with the animated Hobbit and Return of the King, and I was rudely shocked. This was done by a different director, and is nothing like the other two. There are no clever songs. The animation is much poorer, incorporating some live action. This is not a quality film by any means, however, it is kind of amusing from a bad movie standpoint. Be forwarned before you buy.
Rating: 
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS MOVIE
Review: I bought this film thinking it would be good due to the fact that it was based on one of the greatest books of all time, boy was I wrong. Before anyone buys this film they should know that many of the charectors are not animated and are cheapily produced versions of real people edited into the film. When they get to Bree all charectors asides from the main ones are real people edited in with the hobbits and dwarves there played by what appear to be midgets. Asides from outdated and flawed animation forms many important story elements are left out and the film itself is incomplete. This film at best would be entertaining to small children.
Rating:
Summary: A daring attempt that just doesn't cut it.
Review: I have recently become an avid Lord of the Rings fan. I've read all of the books, and seen the film by Peter Jackson 3 times already, (planning to go back for more!). So, when I saw the animated adaptation at Blockbuster the other day, I jumped at the chance and rented it right away. Frankly, I now believe I should have left it on the shelf. Understanding that books are certainly open to adaptation, the animated film does an ok job on that aspect. However, because the film was animated, alot more (special effects-wise) could have been done. The idea of using a rotoscope was fairly ingenious, but the results were disastrous. The rotoscoped scenes come off to the viewer as slightly tacky, and it is easy to tell that it was a low-budget film. The orcs, (goblins for people who aren't familiar with the works of Tolkien), seem quite similar to the primitive bogeymen in the Laurel and Hardy film- March of the Wooden Soldiers. These pieces and the animation seem to clash rather horribly. In reference to the Tolkien books, the story line and characters are a bit jumbled and edited, (almost all of The Two Towers is cut out). In otherwords, this movie nothing to rant and rave about, but it was a daring attempt to adapt an epic story by Ralph Bakshi.
Rating: 
Summary: An underestimated masterpiece
Review: It seems that In the Tolkien society it has become a law to hate Bakshi's version of LOTR. So it's true that the characters and places in the movie are a little different than those that are described in the book... SO WHAT? A perfect adaptation of LOTR is not possible! A movie version of a book should never be an exact replica of the book, it should be the director's version of the book. I think that Bakshi has succeeded in giving the movie some of the Tolkien magic that the book is full of (something that Jackson did not do in his version of the LOTR). Bakshi's use of rotoscope ( the use of both animation and real life filming) is fresh and original even today, although it is true that it is sometimes confusing and distracting I think that it is a brilliant way of creating the movie. The dialogue is pretty loyal to the books and the story line is great because it does not rush through the events in the book yet does not create a 20-hour film. In conclusion I think that this version of LOTR is a much better one than the over budgeted and over commercialized version by Jackson ( and just for an example of how commercialized Jackson's version is just look at the artificial replacement of Glorfindel by Arwen(lyv Tyler). It is a Must see movie for all Tolkien fans.
Rating:
Summary: So much better than it's movie
Review: ...I gave the 1978 cartoon 6/10 out of nostalgic reasons (and the fact that some parts are OK, even so OK as to be directly stolen by the good master Peter Jackson, Lord bless 'is soul! Wraith scene in Bree, anyone, hmm?). However, the *soundtrack* is really good! It's definately also a part of the charm of the movie as a whole, and one reason it doesn't entirely collapse, in my oppinion. The score is not like the much-appraised Howard Shore's from 2001, it's not as sweeping and grand - which is just as well, because the 1978 cartoon didn't have much in the "sweeping & grand cinematography department"! Rosenman's score does offer some of the same chilling moods, though, in his own style. I'm not listening to the album as I write, but one theme I'll never forget (apart from the main) is the disturbing horns accompanying the arrival of the Uruk-Hai (orcs) on the screen. Talk about music suited for an orc horde! Spot on! If you're both a film score fan AND a Tolkien/fantasy fan I'd say you had a pretty sure buy here. If you're just one of the two, well, I'd still give it a try, actually! On an imdb-scale, the soundtrack scores 8.5/10 for me, which is very good, giving it impressive 4/5 here on Amazon!
Rating:
Summary: I thought it an admirable attempt
Review: Conventional wisdom has always held that "The Lord Of The Rings" is unfilmmable - and I still believe today that that is true.
My personal favourite rendition of the tale - aside from the books - is the 13-part BBC radio production. I would consider myself a loyal fan of Tolkien's epic, and while Bakshi's animated version is a bit quirky and uneven, I think it conveys the feel of Tolkien's books more accurately than Jackson's over-budgeted recent attempt. The challenge in capturing the trilogy is not one of "how do we make Orcs look really cool?"; it is one of how to capture the spirit and grandeur of a splendidly imaginative epic. It is not a problem that can be solved simply by spending truckloads of money on thousands of hours of computer rendering time. It's not one that can be addressed by simply making a list of every element in the story that you want, cramming it in wholesale without any regard for relative importance, and ending up with a film that's both too short and too long. Movie-makers really have to grow out of the cynical, lazy belief that the quality of a movie is proportional to its budget. Bakshi's take on The Lord Of The Rings admirably captures the spirit of the trilogy up to somewhere in the middle of the second book. It suffers at times from uneven texture between scenes (depending on whether the scene was rotoscoped or fully animated), but does an amazing job in utilizing the 2h 10m to tell the story faithfully. Although animated, I think in some ways it is geared towards a more mature audience than the latest offering. After seeing this film, I'm left with the feeling of having watched a fitting tribute to a great book, by a humble fan of Tolkien's work. While Jackson may be a fan, I left the theatre with the feeling that I had just witnessed the work of a man with motives more monetary than reverent. I felt that someone had taken something that was dear to me and sold it. Look carefully and notice how many of the scenes in Jackson's production are rather closely modelled on Bakshi. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And to address the peculiar-but-commonplace complaint that Aragorn looked like a Native American... well, why the heck shouldn't he? I thought he had an appropriate air of noble dignity...
Rating:
Summary: impossible to overlook the flaws in this horrible adaptation
Review: Obviously an unfinished work which should never have been released to the public. Horrible animation! I imagine that everyone who was involved in this project are all groaning because of the new attention it is receiving and wishing that whatever money grubbers decided to release this in DVD just to ride the wave of Peter Jackson's success had thought better of it. You should get paid to watch this.
Rating:
Summary: It was not meant to be....
Review: The mixing of animation with live action, while bold, was a disaster. The beginning of this movie was a bit more true to the actual story than the new version in theaters, but the new version, while not perfect, was edited for integrity. This version was poorly edited, and the animation just could not rise to the task of showing us Professor Tolkien's world. Also, there was the unnatural break in the story where, instead of stopping at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, they tried to cram the first half of the Two Towers into this movie as well. This attempted cramming destroyed the chief asset that this version had going for it up until that point: integrity. Everything after Aragorn and those with him started following the Orcs was just too hurried, and were stripped of all the flavor that the Professor had given those aspects of the story. The Orcs, for example, looked like caricatures of Neanderthals from early films of the twentieth century. If they were that stupid, they would not be threats. But the worst part was from the point that Merry and Pippin met Treebeard until the end of the film. It seemed that at that point they realized that they were running out of reel space and so they went to overdrive, and started skipping whole sections of the actual books. Finally, the Battle of Helm's Deep was made into a victory solely because of Gandalf. He actually had very little to do with it, directly.
Then nothing is left of the film. The beginning was fairly true, the middle bit less so, and by the end nothing was accurate. The animation simply was not equal to the task, and mixing animation with live action proved to be no solution to the inadequacies of the animation. So the only factors left are the dialogue, and the score. The dialogue, even towards the end, was still fairly true, and they even used it to mitigate the rest of the productions lack of integrity, and the score was beautiful. I had forgotten how much I liked the music. It was a bold failure.
Rating: 
Summary: Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings
Review: J.R.R. Tolkien's exciting story of Middle Earth is brought to the screen in Ralph Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings." I stumbled upon this movie right before I started reading the books. Most importantly, this movie does a good job of telling the story in animation form. I did enjoy this film, except for a few parts. For example, Gollum was a little disappointing because he was not as frightening as described in the books. Another problem was that it was rather unusual and confusing when they mixed real-life shots with animation. The movie ends right in the middle of "The Two Towers," and leaves the rest of the trilogy unfinished.
Even though I've been touching its bad sides, the Lord of the Rings has rather a charming side as well. Many parts are exciting, and leave you on the edge of your seat. Some characters such as the ringwraiths are quite masterfully animated. The heroes are brave, and the evil forces are menacing. If you are a fan of Tolkien's masterpieces, then you must see this interpretation of The Lord of the Rings.
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