The live action version is alot better. In fact, it's the best film, that I have ever slept through.

A terrible version of what I consider to be the greatest work in all of fantasy fiction. Gollum and Saruman, who are the most complex characters Tolkien ever came up with, are embarassing. Gollum is transformed into some sort of creepy Cockney crackhead, and Saruman's voice is particularly twee and annoying, closer to some kind of high pitched eunuch than a wizard known for a powerful, cunning, and tricky voice. Sam is very gushy, and looks like he's been on a 2 week bender. Bakshi apparently ran out of money and that's why it abruptly stops after the Helm's Deep section. The animation and live action scenes superimposed on top of the animation are pretty bad, even if one allows that the technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. The film turned a small profit, but received almost unanimously awful reviews, and deservedly so. It stays fairly close to the story, maybe a little closer than the Peter Jackson films did, but it's nowhere close to those in quality.

They aren't that bad - just long and droning.

I had just finished reading the books for the first time when this abomination came out. I had been trying to get my family to read the books, as a result my Mom said she would never read them (Fortunately Jackson has changed her mind). This was some kind of drug induced nightmare version of the story...very wierd....

An abject failure that has unfortunately had a bit of a reprise with the success of Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Bad animation, with a bizarre blend of quasi-live action, barely faithful to the books it simply stops (I will not say ends) roughly in the middle of the trilogy. Ghastly.

I laughed at how bad it was. Even the live action films were better.

It just doesn't do the books juctice, it's painful to watch.

When I was a kid my parents took me to this movie. I can remember the first incomprehensible 15 minutes...then I fell asleep.