Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

O2D I see some reviewers got Frodo of the nine fingers and the ring of doom! stuck in their heads.Well let me tell you, it will never go away.I went many years without seeing this movie and have never forgotten that song.So anyway, the funniest part about the music is how this time they hired a minstrel to write a song about their journeys.What???But sadly, the music is the best part of this movie.After the disappointing Hobbit cartoon you wouldn't think they could do much worse but they could and did.I guess for a thirty-seven year old made for TV cartoon movie, it's really not that bad.I bet if you watched every other TV movie that was made in 1980, this would be the best.But it's 2017 and we have had a half dozen awesome hobbit movies so this is terrible.

ryderstrong69 This was a great adaptation of the book. The songs and poems translated very well into the cartoon. People often like to put these movies up against the Peter Jackson films made decades later and of course movies made in the late 70s and early 80 with budgets under 4 million dollars wont be as good as live action films with budgets in the 100 million dollar range. That said for the time period it was a very good animated film that was enjoyable for kids and adults. The animation was good even by a lot of todays standards. This movie has also inspired a lot of people to go out and read the LOTR books. If you enjoy the books or even the Newer films you should check this movie out.

michael_the_nermal This movie is unfairly maligned as a cheesy adaptation. It is much closer to Tolkien's book than the big-budget live-action movie. Rankin-Bass did an admirable job attempting to piece together the final third of The Lord of the Rings without the first 2/3 of the plot as a back story. The animation is actually quite good for a made-for-TV movie. Since the book was so thick with plot and action, the movie's limited time and treatment seems rushed, and sometimes makes little sense unless you had read the previous two Lord of the Rings books. As was mentioned before, this movie includes important scenes from the novel that were left out of Peter Jackson's movie, making the Rankin-Bass version a relatively faithful adaptation. Keep in mind it was made for TV by an animation studio known for making cheesy Christmas and Easter specials. Tolkien's novel, while intended for young readers, was much darker in tone than anything Rankin-Bass had done. This studio did one hell of job translating the themes and dark tones from the book into a made-for-TV cartoon movie.I can tolerate the folksy songs. If you don't like sappy folk ballads, then this movie is not for you. This movie is full of 'em. I personally enjoyed "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way." Don't know why, but it's a catchy song. Rankin-Bass wants to explore the notion that the Orcs are not pure evil, which is fine by me, and that they have feelings too. It was done a little sappily, but at least it was an attempt at depth which I appreciated.Oh, I must mention the voices. John Huston is divine as Gandalf the Wizard; he has a magisterial voice that lends credence to the role. Orson Bean and Roddy McDowall are decent as the hobbit heroes. Brother Theodore, the famed performance artist, is excellent as the villain Gollum. I actually preferred Theodore's demented, crazed voice to the hisses of Andy Serkis. The Lord of the Nazgul has a cheesy robot voice, as filtered through a voice changing machine, but for a little kid, that can be quite intimidating. The Mouth of Sauron is one creepy dude, drawn with the same kind of skill Rankin Bass brought to their fantasy cartoons. Some may think the animation sucks, but I dug it. If you actually enjoyed the animation here, watch another good Rankin-Bass movie, "Flight of Dragons."

louiepatti When Rankin and Bass unveiled their version of Tolkien's "The Hobbit" in 1977, it was a charming if abbreviated made-for-television animated film that was fun and even a bit scary. Their voice casting choices were fine, especially Richard Boone, whose cancer-rasped voice brought the dragon Smaug to life, and Theodore as the creepy and loathsome Gollum, who evoked fear and disgust but little pity. In 1978, Ralph Bakshi attempted to bring the first half of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy to the big screen in his lushly animated epic. Unfortunately, his big-budget film flopped, much to the disappointment of Tolkien's fans, and Bakshi would be unable to make his sequel. In an effort to finish off the unfinished series, Rankin and Bass tried to make their own version to satisfy the audience who wanted to see closure. It was and remains an unmitigated disaster.Why is this cartoon so awful? Well, the answer lies mainly in the word "cartoon". Unlike The Hobbit, which featured beautifully painted scenery that evoked delicate watercolors and ethereal linework, which had so evidently been crafted with loving care and cast with thought to matching characters to actors, The Return of the King had all the earmarks of having been hastily cobbled together. It wasn't so much an animated homage to a great writer's work as a hatchet job. A huge chunk of the events in Tolkien's books were missing between where Bakshi's fairly faithful rendition ended and this abomination began. The drawings were slapped together and were often repetitious and ugly. Voice actors from the first film returned and some of them worked: Orson Bean was fine as Frodo, Theodore was again great as Gollum, Theodore Bikel did a fine job as Aragorn, and Roddy McDowall was wonderful as Samwise Gamgee. The rest were abysmal. Instead of hiring actors to do the characters, cartoon voice actors such as Don Messick (Scooby-Doo) and Casey Kasem (Shaggy) were cast. It was downright painful to hear a Nazgull being done by Scooby Doo through a distortion filter. Many characters integral to Tolkien's story were cast away: Where was Gimli? Faromir? Any of the elves (other than Elrond) such as Legolas or Glorfindel? How about the Army of the Dead or Sauroman? Merry and Pippin didn't develop as characters; Gollum remained merely vile, as if Bakshi's attempts to show this tortured being's strangely noble and pathetic side never happened. The dialog was stilted and sometimes unintentionally hilarious ("As the flag's standard broke the wind. . ."). It was awful beneath description from beginning to end, appearing to be a shameless attempt to cash in on the hopes of frustrated fans who'd wanted the second animated movie made.That, of course, was the entire problem. This cartoon was, despite its trappings and claims, just a cartoon, less charming by far than The Hobbit and far less noble than Bakshi's film. Both of those were honest attempts at creating art, and each succeeded in its limited way until swept aside by Peter Jackson, who finally gave Tolkien's opus the treatment it deserved. The two earlier films merit a place of honor for trying to achieve cinematic beauty. Rankin and Bass's The Return of the King deserves to simply be forgotten.