Search - The Lord Of the Rings on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG Content Advisory: Violence, Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1978 DVD Release: 09/11/2001 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 14 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Total Copies: 9 Genres: Fantasy, Sword-and-Sorcery, Fantasy Adventure

Controversial animator Ralph Bakshi's literal adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy trilogy, -The Lord of the Rings, is brought to the screen in a reverent, stilted way, with Bakshi forsaking his sharp-edged animated looniness for a rotoscoped dullness. Although the film's title encompasses the entire Tolkien trilogy, this longish Bakshi feature, in fact, covers only the first book, -The Fellowship of the Ring, and the first half of the second, -The Two Towers. Given the complexity of the original story line, this unfortunately means that only those intimately familiar with the books will be able to understand what is happening in the movie. In brief, however, an evil sorcerer from a previous era created a magical ring which enables its users to call upon its tremendous powers to rule the world, but it inevitably warps them to evil. It was believed lost, but during a resurgence of magical evil in the world, Bilbo, a simple, plain-spoken hobbit, recovers it from its hiding place. The forces of good give his nephew Frodo the choice to bear the awful burden of the ring to a place where it may be destroyed. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Christopher Guard - Frodo
William Squire - Gandalf
Michael Sholes
John Hurt - Aragorn
Simon Chandler - Meriadoc
Dominic Guard - Pippin

Ralph Bakshi directed this animated fantasy, which uses rotoscoping (a method of tracing animation over live-action images) to bring to life J.R.R. Tolkien's mythical world of Middle-earth. The movie has been given a letterboxed transfer in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (and has been enhanced for playback on widescreen monitors), and the audio is presented in Dolby Digital Stereo (there is also an alternate French language track in Dolby Digital Mono). The disc has also been encoded with optional subtitles in eight languages -- English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Mandarin, Korean, and Thai. The original theatrical trailer has been included as a bonus feature, as well as biographies of the filmmakers and J.R.R. Tolkien. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide