Product: The Last Unicorn [VHS] (1982)
Rating: 5.0
A near-perfect adaptation of the original novel!
My seeing this movie took a convoluted route. I saw the trailers as a young teenager, never got to see the movie, then found the book lying on a shelf at my summer camp, gathering dust. The camp counselors let me keep it, and I loved every page. A few years later, my local video store got a copy and I finally saw the movie.Normally, after reading the book the movie is a vast disappointment. Not so with this. The movie captures all of the essentials and most of the small details of the novel, and keeps the same energy level and emotions. The fact that Mr. Beagle wrote the screenplay as well as the novel probably has something to do with this. ;-)The characters are very well interpreted and acted, with the best performances given by Angela Lansbury (Mommy Fortuna) and Christopher Lee (King Haggard). Picking Robert Klein as the Butterfly was an inspired choice -- even though it's only a five-minute portion of the film, the producers paid as much attention to this minor character as to the major ones that fill the story.As other reviewers have noted, you get the impression that none of the characters are truly "evil". They simply have suffered bad fortune or disappointment (as everyone in life does at one time or another), and how they chose to react to that is what ultimately shaped their character. This is a nice touch and a welcome departure from standard "black-and-white" fantasy characters.The music soundtrack, frankly, is bland, and many of the songs are unnecessary (the romantic duet between the Unicorn and Prince Lir is particularly saccharine -- yes, I'm a guy, but I'm a married guy with a daughter and thinking of that song STILL turns my stomach). On the plus side, most of the songs were performed by America, and they seemed to understand the music was secondary to the overall story and kept things reasonably muted and subdued.The animation isn't the best. I felt like I was watching "The Hobbit" again, just with a different story. But the animation is just a conveyance for the story, and the story is what is most important here.This is a must-have for any fantasy-lovers video collection. While there is some violence and some slightly scary scenes, it's still a Rankin/Bass animation, and that means that kids won't be unduly frightened.