Product: The Hobbit [VHS] (1977)
Rating: 5.0
You Really Have to Grow Up With It...
Anyone who didn't see this movie as a child is likely to have a different reaction to this film. It is really rather cheesy and has some odd quirks. Whether you find them charming or not will likely depend on how old you were when you first saw it. I was fortunate enough to see it as a kid so I love it. A few of the oddities: When characters die they get a shocked expression and then twirl around into the distance. There is no blood and no body. The characters are very over-dramatic and make load pronouncements. They also include a great deal of singing, both songs of Tolkien's making and of their own.The main characters are quite distinctive and memorable. Bilbo is played to perfection by Orson Bean. He's a quiet man who often narrates his own story. He sounds suitably stick-in-the-mud. His character design is unusual and he looks very distinctive from the dwarves. He's rather soft and circular while they're blocky and angular. Gandalf is played by the great John Huston. I know him as a director but he has a wonderfully commanding voice. His Gandalf is actually a little too powerful. When you see him inThe Return of the Kingyou realize that while it works perfectly for the Hobbit it limits him greatly in the other books. He can disappear at will, basically teleports from one place to another, and can apparently summon the sun. He's beyond danger. He seems to know exactly what's going to happen in the future including the nature of the ring. It fits well here like I said, and that's what's important. The other film isn't even worth seeing. Thorin is wonderfully confident and proud. All the dwarves have deep and somewhat unusual voices. Balin and Bombur are the two that really stand out. The rest of the dwarves are really only background extras. Most of them don't even have spoken lines. Gollum is wonderful. He seems suitably crazy and dangerous although he's less quick and wiry than I imagine him to be. He looks rather more like he could overpower Bilbo than outmaneuver him. Smaug is played by Richard Boone in a very angry and animalistic performance that, as much as I love it, is probably out of character for the silver-tongued worm. He's a surprisingly mammalian-looking dragon with fur and everything. Elrond is bearded oddly enough, but you can tell he's an elf because he has a halo. It is a little odd. Something that I actually didn't notice until I thought about it is that everyone speaks with an American accent. You get so engrossed in the performances that you just don't notice. It doesn't stand out at all. The only people who don't sound American are the woodelves. They have some strange foreign accent that is quite strange. Their design is odd too. They look like green, segmented, lumpen beings.The animation style is unique. I've never seen anything quite like it. The backgrounds are watercolors, which couldn't possibly represent reality but are beautiful nonetheless. It's a limited and cheap animation with a great deal of repetitive motions and animation saving motionlessness. Depending on how you look at it it's either charming or cheap. Either way it's distinctive. Certainly it's better than the overanimation ofLord of the Rings. The use of the ring is done well. When Bilbo puts it on he doesn't vanish but turns almost invisible so the audience can see him but nobody else can. I don't know how else they could show it without confusing the audience. The colors are generally dull earth tones but they make it fit with the world. The music is a delight, although again it helps to have seen it as a child. A lot of the singing is quite cheesy.A lot of the storytelling is wonderful. They set up Bilbo's longing for adventure wonderfully in the opening titles as he dreams he's a rich king in the dwarf kingdom having samples of his treasure brought to him. Later on they zoom out to see endless echoing caverns during the riddles with Gollum which sets up the lonely isolation better than anything else could. My favorite moment in the whole film is when Bilbo climbs a tree in Mirkwood and looks out over the world giving a view of Bag's End far far away which sets up the mood perfectly. At 77 minutes there isn't enough time for everything. Beorn is skipped entirely as is the setup in the beginning. The Battle of Five Armies is rather brief too. It will be a great deal of fun seeing what Peter Jackson does with all this when he makes his version. I really hope that there is something comparable when Bilbo climbs the tree.So that's the film. If you've got any nostalgia for this film then you'll probably not be disappointed to see it again. It's exactly like I remember it being when I was a kid. I can't wait to see the live action adaptation but I doubt it will remove my nostalgia for this film, although I may see aspects of it in a new light.