The Hobbit

[Bill Ferny]

I vaguely remember watching the Hobbit when I was kid, so last year I rented the movie. It’s a great movie, in my opinion, and it seemed to follow the book more than any other Tolkien related film I seen to date. True it was obviously aimed at children, but then again, so was the book. On the down side, the wood elves were a bit too ugly for me, and the goblins weren’t ugly enough, and the 70ish music was horrid. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the Last Unicorn, and it is obvious that the two films come from the same tradition.<P>I disagree about the hobbits, though. I thought the animators did a good job portraying hobbits, and for that matter, dwarves.<P>The Bakshi film… I wish he had never gotten a hold of the rights. Like all his films, that one was simply way too surreal, kind of like an acid trip in Middle-Earth.