The Lord of the Rings

Lacking a firm center in Frodo's story, the film plays itself out as a bewildering parade of elves, dwarves, ores, trolls and talking trees.

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.

It looked terrible then and it still does: cartoon characters move differently from live actors, and the attempt to duplicate natural movement ends in stylistic incoherence.

Quite simply, those who do not know the characters of Middle Earth going in will not know them coming 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.

The film is visually compelling even when murk overtakes the narrative.

Bakshi's 2.5 hour animation epic has been drowned by its inability to breathe any real identity into the Hobbits, Orcs, Wizards, and Elves, that Tolkien created. The result is an ordeal for the backside.

Sheer tedium from start to finish.

If it achieves nother more than causing those unfamiliar with the worlds of Tolkien to actually read the original books then it has not been a pointless exercise.

Ralph Bakshi achieves spectacular effects. [Full Review in Spanish]