Product: The Hobbit [VHS] (1977)
Rating: 1.0
DVD quality is awful. Movie is the fun kid's film I remembered.
My low rating is because of the picture and sound quality on this DVD version. It is really bad. I still have my old VHS tape from the 80's when I recorded this film from the t.v. I bought this DVD because I thought it would be better quality -- wrong! My cheapy VHS to DVD converter that I bought for $125 could have made a better copy. The picture is blurry, the colors are completely washed out. Any scene that takes place in a dark setting (and there are lots of them since half the story is in a dark forest, cave or mountain) is almost impossible to see. Gollum swimming across the water in his little boat? All that you can see are his eyes. The soundtrack is junk (although I wasn't expecting the sound quality to be great) Overall, a disappointment.As for the story adaptation.... it was meant to convey the story to children in about 75 minutes. It succeeds on that level. As a little kid, I was completely taken with this cartoon and thought it was the most epic and grand thing I had ever seen. I think it does a decent job of condensing the material to manageable bites. I'm not sure what a kid in 2012 would think of it. Maybe with a restored and remastered version they might enjoy it. But this poor attempt at a DVD will not entertain anyone.