Rating: 
Summary: Huge Tolkien Fan
Review: As a Tolkien fan, it was painful to watch. So many things were wrong when compared to the books. I believe that it was a waste of my money, and I should have never bought it. At least I have one more LOTR item.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lord of the Rings
Review: "The Lord of the Rings" is a splendid animated movie! But it lacks good animation because of the rotoscoping and the movie was never completed making it some what disappointing. But all in all it is an enjoyable animated movie that has spectacular adventure and fantasy to offer.GRADE: B out of an A+
Rating:
Summary: IT BURNS US, IT BURNS US!!!!!!
Review: This is just a poor film. It covers the FOTR and TT portions of the LOTR, just ending flat with no warning despite the title of LOTR. The characters here are just plain ugly, many are historical Earth (not Middle Earth) stereotypes that don't fit in or reflect the descriptions in the book at all. Samwise feels more like Dopey the Dwarf than the hobbit that helps save the free peoples of Middle Earth. The Balrog looks like a bipedal chimera in bell bottoms. The orcs look more like a cross between dogs and apes than elves taken my Melkor, tortured and aruined over the ages as is told. Many more such horrors abound through out the film, only they are perpetrated by the film makers not Sauron. If you are a collector you may want to buy this for completion of your collection, but I really wouldn't recommend watching it. It was a painful experience.
Rating: 
Summary: I Love This Movie!
Review: I don't care what the negative reviews about this fantasy movie say! Director Ralph Bakshi's version of "The Lord of the Rings" is my favorite animated movie (and it always will be). "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie is a great classic with a lot of adventure, fantasy, and excitement. This movie has a great musical (score), spectacular voice acting, and a good amount of awsome animated battle sequences. "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie has a lot of fantasy characters in it such as: orcs, phantoms, elves, wizards, hobbits (which are halflings), and more. But, its just too bad that this great epic fantasy movie was never completed. Oh well. "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie, directed by Ralph Bakshi, is a great peice of work! I give it an A out of an A+ as my rating.
Rating:
Summary: 4.5 stars really
Review: I was struck when I watched this rendition that there really are flaws in Peter Jackson's well crafted live action movies and the animation version covers some aspects of Tolkien better.. While time constraints made the movie choppy, the dialog that acutally gets into the film is quite good and reflects Peter Beagle's talents. There are no "lets hunt some orc" lines here. The biggest flaws are the orcs, who look like gorillas and the rendition of Sam. The highs are seeing a Frodo who does not flop like a fish out of water at every crisis; the excellent magic/wraithworld depictions; and the "realism" of the fights. The nine walkers never kill a hundred enemies in 5 minutes here. Annette Crosby as Galadriel and John Hurt as Aragorn are fantastic. The scenery for most of the film is magic. As the movie heads into the Two Towers, it becomes rushed and chaotic. I wish I go could back in time and give Bakshi some of New Line's returns. With money for three features and a little tinkering, this could have been a true classic. As it is there are parts of this movie which are a tonic for the more egregious flaws in the new movies, both from cinematic and Tolkien purist perspectives. If you could have put a Beagle-type script with Jackson's painstaking detail and new technology, you would have the best movies ever.
Rating:
Summary: This film is hostile to the viewer
Review: This movie is openly hostile to the viewer. Unless you have a good understanding of the books and you like painfully bad animation, avoid this "film". There are those that will tell you this film is a "misunderstood work of genius" or a "flawed masterpiece". They are lying. They only want you to share in the pain they feel from having paid good money for the privilage of getting poked in the eye by the horrible animation. To be fair, substantial inebriation will lesson the impact on the soul, but even being tanked to the gills is no panacea to the harm this film can do. And too much alcohol is never a good thing.
Rating:
Summary: The Lord of the Rings
Review: "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie is a great classic! The music (score) is good, the voice acting is excellent, and the movie itself is exciting considering it was fantasy. This movie has a lot of adventure, animated action sequences, and fun combined. There are many fantasy characters brought to life in this movie. And those characters are: orcs, phantoms, a fiery demon, elves, dwarves, wizards, halflings (also called hobbits), and more. But, there are three things that I do not like about this movie. First of all: it does not go by the author J.R.R. Tolkiens "The Lord of the Rings" book trilogy, which I have read, that well. The plot this movie has could have been better by going more by "The Lord of the Rings" book trilogy (which, of coarse, this animated movie is based on). Second of all: this movie was never completed. There was no more money to finish creating "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie based on the author J.R.R. Tolkiens wonderful book trilogy. And third of all: the director (Ralph Bakshi), and crew, rotoscoped some of the characters in this movie. In this case they decided to rotoscope the ring-wraiths, orcs, and other characters that are in this animated movie. But, the rotoscoping process was not that good at all back in the year 1978 (when this movie was being made); and the characters in "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie, that were rotoscoped, do not match the animated background (environment) or the actual animated characters throughout the movie. The rotoscoping process is the biggest flaw this movie has. Though "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie does have its flaws, that does not make it a bad flick to watch. Leave aside that this movie is not a good adaptation of a wonderful book trilogy by a great author, the terrible fact that this movie was never completed, and the bad rotoscoping; "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie is a great movie by director Ralph Bakshi. I give "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie a good four out of five stars as my rating because it is a great movie to watch and it is one of my favorite animated movies so I won't let it down.
Rating:
Summary: The Lord of the Rings
Review: "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie is a classical film for the entire family to watch and enjoy! It is filled with fantasy, adventure, and fun. This movie also happens to have a good amount of animated action sequences. The music score in this movie is very good (as it stands out for the anticipation). The voice acting in this movie was also very good. But "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie does have it's flaws. For instance the plot. The plot in this movie did not go by the author J.R.R. Tolkiens "Lord of the Rings" book trilogy, which I have read, very well. There were many parts that were in the book trilogy that weren't seen in "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie. The fact that this movie was never completed really did dissapoint me. It ended right after a battle called Helms Deep and there was supposed to be a lot more parts after that. But there was no other part in this movie after the Battle for Helms Deep ended. Rumor has it that Ralph Bakshi, the director of "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie, ran out of money to complete it. And the biggest flaw this movie had was rotoscoping. The rotoscoping in this movie did not match the animated characters, or animated background, in this movie at all. In this case the director, and producers, of "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie decided to do the rotoscoping process on the ring-wraiths, orcs, and a little more characters seen throughout this movie. But that was a majore mistake, and yet a huge flaw in this movie, because the rotoscoping process back in 1978 was not good at all. Oh well. I guess there are a lot of animated movies out there with it's flaws. All in all "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie is a great film for anyone to watch. There are many fantasy characters brought to life from "The Lord of the Rings" book trilogy onto this great animated movie. And those characters are: ring-wraiths, the watcher in the water, orcs, the balrog demon, the gollum creature, an ent, hobbits, elves, dwarves, and wizards. I don't highly recommend you buy "The Lord of the Rings" animated movie directed by Ralph Bakshi, but it is a great animated film to watch if you are in the mood for watching a good classical movie.
Rating:
Summary: Truly horrible--and practically unintelligible.
Review: This production, on the surface at least, should have had a lot going for it. Prior to the advent of convincing computerized special effects, J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" was an obvious and natural candidate for translation to an animated feature. The array of talent assembled for it was formidable, especially the voice actors, who represent the one consistent bright spot in the film. Peter S. Beagle, one of the scriptwriters, was and is a fine fantasy author in his own right with a deep appreciation for Tolkien. Even Ralph Bakshi, despite the seeming conflict between his counterculture subversiveness and Tolkien's mainstream Christian leanings, wasn't an entirely bad choice as director. In the end, though, it is rather difficult to convey fully just how awful this animated feature is. But I'll try. Let's start with the most glaring deficiency: midway through the production, they ran out of money. The movie ends abruptly with part of "The Two Towers" and all of "The Return of the King" left to come. As anyone who knows the first thing about Tolkien's "trilogy" can tell you, it isn't really a trilogy, but a single book split for the sake of convenience into three volumes. So, everything is left hanging, nothing is resolved, and there is no sequel to turn to or anticipate. Beyond this, the story is, perhaps by necessity, compressed to such a degree that much of what results is incoherent. I can't imagine that anyone who is not intimately familiar with the book could make any sense of this. I can't imagine anyone not irrationally enamored of the book having any appreciation for the stilted, awkward dialogue, either. Despite some fine voice talent, and the hand of Peter S. Beagle, the script is genuinely terrible. The conventional animation sequences are occasionally interspersed with live-action footage that has been colored over (so-called "rotoscoping"), which is, to say the least, distracting; to say more, it's genuinely ugly. Although I can imagine that this technique has its own aficionados, I am not one of them. The score is equivalent in quality to that of the average 1970s Saturday morning cartoon, mostly consisting of cheap-sounding, staccato horns. It isn't all bad. The voices are perfect (frankly, I prefer John Hurt's voice to Viggo Mortenson's image as Aragorn), and there are occasional scenes that stick out as particularly effective or genuine-Frodo's reunion with Bilbo at Rivendell, for example. It is easy to envision a fine comic book (or graphic novel, if you wish to call it that) derived from selected stills of this film. And for purists, this version is far truer to the book than the newer live-action version directed by Peter Jackson-no blown-up role for Arwen here-although it still leaves a great deal out. None of these assets come close to canceling out the dreadfulness of the production as a whole, however. If you're interested in "The Lord of the Rings," read the books, read commentaries on them, even see the Peter Jackson-directed features if you want, but avoid this film.
Rating:
Summary: utterly disappointing, as a tolkien and and animation fan
Review: Animation and Tolkien, all wrapped up in a nice little bundle. Sounded just like something that I would love. But to my shock and horror, the next hour and a half would scar my mind of both worlds. Lets start off with the character design, shall we? Each character is depicted horribly, and I cannot recall a single one that was pleasing to the eye. These were not races of middle earth, they were monsters, mutants, and simply put, freaks. And of course, no one save Peter Jackson has ever created a Gollum/Smeagol that does the character any justice; this was no exception. The plot was extremely hard to follow, even as a big lover of the books. I have not only read Lord of the Rings numerous times; I have studied it. And even as a knowledgable person on the subject, I had a difficult time understanding how the plot was working. It was unclear, and I cannot imagine how many people who have not read the books were left in nothing but a fog that would have made the Misty Mountains seem like a clear blue sky. Then who can forget the 'end?' The movie cuts off at about the halfway point of The Two Towers, and its ending point is illogical, and does not nearly bring any sense of closure Time for the animation. You would think, that even if the movie did not do the book justice, that I would still appreciate it for its animation, right? Wrong. This was new, inventive animation at the time, and it's easy to see why the coloring of real life images to fake animation was never pursued. Not only was this an increadibly cheesy effect, it was not consistant at all. It kept switching back from painted images, to traditional animation, which made it even more displeasing to the eye. Particularly in my case, as I have very low tolerance for bad animation. In short, do NOT rent/buy/watch this interpretation of Tolkien's amazing world. There are reasons for it not making enough money to finish the story in a second movie. Simply put, it was mediocre.
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