Product: The Hobbit [VHS] (1977)
Rating: 5.0
Astounding....
The excellent book by JRR Tolkien became a unit for 7th grade language arts at my school. After listening to a dramatization, we were showed the movie. To my surprise, it wasn't all that corny.The Hobbit was created at an expense high enough to easily gain the title of Most Expensive Television Animated Feature. It was originally shown on NBC as a 90-minute special in around 1977 and was made by the same people who brought us the stop-motion Christmas specials, Rankin/Bass. It isn't on the level of Disney animation, but a stellar job.I don't believe that the cartoon strayed away from the book at all, and its use of song helps advance the plot greatly, a trait most missed by Disney. The repetition of the Irish-styled folk song, however, annoyed me a bit.The voice acting is next to perfect, except that the dialogue, at times, was a bit too intelligible. It was also Americanized a lot. Orson Bean was the perfect choice for the title character Bilbo Baggins, since he could do an excellent "worried" voice that would be a necessity for the hobbit. John Huston does a good job with Gandalf, but the part should have been given to a British voice actor, preferably English or Scottish.Overall, this is great stuff and must be bought.