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The Lord of the Rings

1978

Ralph Bakshi

Animation, Voice: Christopher Guard, William Squire, Michael Scholes ...

6.3

9,257

Animation. Adventure. Fantasy Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's revered Middle-earth saga captures the dark mood of the books extraordinarily well. The film covers the first half of the trilogy--THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING and the earlier part of THE TWO TOWERS--as Frodo (voiced by Christopher Guard), the cousin of Bilbo Baggins from THE HOBBIT, is given the all-powerful ring sought by the evil Sauron of Mordor. So begins his adventure, as he ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	William Thomas Empire	"What most people remember is the mix of the live-action tracing within the traditional animation and just how effectively creepy it managed to be, but for the time this did a pretty good job of adapting the dense novels."	POS
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Tribune	"It looked terrible then and it still does (...) the attempt to duplicate natural movement ends in stylistic incoherence."	NEG
United Kingdom	Time Out	"Bakshi's version, using animation and live-action tracings, is uniformly excellent, sticking closely to the original text and visually echoing many of Tolkien's own drawings."	POS
United States	Variety Staff Variety	"Quite simply, those who do not know the characters of Middle Earth going in will not know them coming out."	NEG
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"The film is visually compelling even when murk overtakes the narrative."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"Falls far short of the charm and sweep of the original story."	NEU
United States	Slate	"A showcase for inspired imagery and sheer strangeness, a near-miss magnum opus from another era, before the cult of Tolkien went Hollywood."	POS
United Kingdom	Matt Ford BBC	"An atmospheric fairytale romp across the landscapes of Tolkien's imagination."	POS

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