Rating: 
Summary: Yawn
Review: Ralph Bakshi has never made a good film. Period. This is one of the worst.
Rating: 
Summary: I dont get the animosity this film receives
Review: First of all, this is a very faithful rendition of the Lord of the Rings, with a superb cast of voices that work amazingly well. I saw this first when I was a kid and had not read any of the books so it was completely fresh to me and I still loved it. Today, I watched it right before I went to see the new version. I have to say I was impressed with it overall, even after all this time. Its not what it could have been as an animated film, but its pretty good. Great musical score but with some awkward animated sequences but I didnt mind that much.
Rating: 
Summary: cared little, cared little still
Review: I first saw The Lord of the Rings 3 or 4 years ago. The first hour was rather intersting, but after that the story became disjointed, confusing, and boring. Plus, it relied TOO MUCH on rotoscoping to the point when it seemed like the whole movie was in rotoscope. Needles to say, I left the room to get a snack and never came back. The recent release squashes this early effort to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's story to the screen,
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting for fans; non-fans will be confused.
Review: When I was 7, my Aunt Bobby took me to see Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings at the Zigfield Theater in Manhattan. I will always remember sitting in that cavernous theater, watching the amazing story of Middle-Earth unfold, and just generally being amazed by the lushly colored animation on the gigantic screen. SO.....bear in mind as you read this that I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this much-maligned film. That was over 20 years ago, and I think I've seen this movie once since then, so when it was released on DVD I eagerly snapped it up. So how does it hold up to the childhood memories?
Pretty good, actually. The story is basically the same as in the book: The Hobbit Frodo is joined by eight companions in a quest to destroy the evil Ring of Sauron. The characters and locales look pretty much as one would imagine from reading the books. (This movie adapts The Fellowship of the Ring & half of The Two Towers.) I had a problem with Strider and Boromir trudging through feet of snow in nothing but their little dresses, though.....bundle up, guys!
The scenery is by turns lush (The Shire), and forbidding (The excellent Mines of Moria sequence). The problems were pretty much all the same: Bakshi's use of "Rotoscoping", or filming real actors and drawing over them. The rotoscoped portions just don't fit with the rest of the movie, and it can be QUITE jarring to look at. (Check out how all of the Orcs seem to have just 2 kinds of faces.....couldn't they at least have made different masks to film the Orc actors in????) Also troubling (in a very minor way...) was how "Saruman" was pronounced "Aruman" about half the time. People who aren't familiar with the story will find that confusing; people who ARE will find it more and more irritating each time it happens......and it happens A LOT. The film also ends a little too abruptly; I remember being bothered by that as a kid. (It still bothers me!) On the plus side, the DVD looks great; the colors are perfect, and the sound is great. It's too bad there aren't more extras: all there is are a few text features. (Not even a trailer!) Overall, not as good as the new film adaptation, but worth a look for Tolkien fans.
Rating:
Summary: This sucked
Review: This movie really did a horrible job of depicting what Tolkien ment by his books, or book and 1/2 since this didn't even finish the story. I mean obvious low budget, but who would have thought that low budget. It's cheesy, bad anamation makes it all the more stupid. It's a story about a ring, and once Gandalf gets into the war part of the story, the producer of the film (so we will call it even though it's not worthy) doens't come out. Forgot all about the ring I guess. The loser who made this story is one to be pitied. He needs to go back to the drawing board (literally), or better yet back to art school, if he ever went there. I know I'm harsh on this, but making such a horrible film that they called based on the greatest novels ever they brought this on themselves. Peter Jackson did it much better anyway, but even if you don't compare them this movie still sucked.
Rating:
Summary: avoid
Review: Yes, I saw this as a kid. It [was bad] then, and it still [is]. The animation is horrible, the voice acting lousy, and the story disjointed and cut up poorly. It is a shame really as the books are one of the greatest examples of English prose. They should have had a much better treatment.
Rating: 
Summary: An underrated, visually sumptuous telling of The Quest
Review: Ralph Bakshi's animated/live-action 1978 production of THE LORD OF THE RINGS is,in my estimate,one of the most underrated cinematic projects ever filmed. LOTR is visually sumptuous, often startling in its depiction of a multi-dimensional MIDDLE EARTH. It failed financially (hence THE RETURN of the KING completion
was never produced)because,apparently,its radical ROTOSCOPE technique distracted or annoyed audiences spoon-fed on spectacular, but undemanding STAR WARS fx.(Perhaps some Tolkien purists did not agree with an excellent screen adaption by Chris Conkling and Peter Beagle.) It is movie-mythology's loss. This version not only renders the tale well but has some sequences(Frodo pursued by terrifying incarnations of The Ring Wraiths;the epic climactic battle between The Fellowship and demonic Orc legions)that are cinematically "mythical" in their own right. Christopher Guard (Frodo);William Squire(Gandalf);John Hurt(Aragorn)are among excellent players whose voices and Rotoscope-altered appearance comprise The Human-Creature-Monster world of Middle Earth and make this AGE wonderous. Many regard Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS as comparable to Homer's ILIAD & ODYSSEY as Archetypal Quest and the greatest modern epic written. Film buffs, fans of good flicks and students of lit., are anticipating release of THE FELLOWSHIP of the RING as opening chapter in a definitve screen presentation of MYTH employing the panoply of CGI; magical fx;with "gravitas" acting, action and worthy adherrence to the literary masterpiece to produce an unequivocal epic... Film fans could do themselves a great favor in checking-out...or reviewing...Ralph Bakshi's seminal effort.Believe it or not,the upcoming movie will have to be a True Spectacle to match what his LORD OF THE RINGS already is......
Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: Most of us are old enough to remember this as a child. I was young enough to be impressed with it all & it inspired me to read Tolkien as I got older. When the movies were announced to be shown on television my brother & I anxiously waited. Now I have been able to share that with my daughter. It is still enchanting & the best part is that there are no commercials to sit through. A much better copy than what we recorded from the television so many years ago. Granted it has the stylings & sound quality of any movie around that era, but that should be expected. I was very pleased that since we purchased this my daughter has watched it over & over again & is now trying to read The Hobbit, trying to catch what all was left out. Anxiously awaiting the release of the Live Action version.
Rating:
Summary: Huge disappointment
Review: As a long-time fan of The Lord Of The Rings, I remember waiting with great anticipation for this movie to be released. I had seen "Wizards," and thought that if anyone at that time had the ability to make LOTR, Ralph Bakshi could. I would have been willing to like it if Bakshi had been able to make anything even remotely resembling my vision of Middle Earth, and I was willing to forgive much. Unfortunately, there was way too much to forgive. The animation is awful, with many unnatural gestures and movements. Some of the characters - Aragorn in particular - are inappropriately drawn. The rotoscoping does not fit in with the rest of the animation, and becomes a jarring distraction. There were gaping holes and inconsistencies in the plot line, which made the movie hard to follow for those not on intimate terms with the books. For some unknown reason, the initial "S" sound is dropped from Saruman's name about half the time. Bakshi would have been better served to spend his time and effort on a smaller portion - just the first book - instead of trying to bite off what was obviously more than he could chew. The fact that Peter Jackson's movie of The Fellowship Of The Ring runs over 3 hours should give pause to anyone thinking that the story can be told in just over 2.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good, But Ends to Early
Review: I saw the animated version of the Hobbit and while it was accurate to the book, it bugged me how Bilbo and all the other characters looked like cute stuffed dolls. The Lord of the Rings is bascially an animated version of The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers. This movie really captures the spirit of the book. But it ends in the battle of Helm's Deep, which any Tolkien fan knows is the middle of The Two Towers. I thought Sam was portrayed as a fat idiot in this movies, which he was not in the book. Just listen, "OH WE'RE GOING TO SEE THE ELVES?! OH BOY! OH HOOOOOORAAAAY!"
| 
