Josh Keown | Night Terror Novels 🧛🏻♂️’s review published on Letterboxd:
“I'm Mr. Bilbo Baggins, I've lost my dwarves, my wizard and my way.”
-Bilbo Baggins (Orson Bean (Voice))
Part 1 of the Middle-Earth Odyssey.
I’ve decided to undertake a quest of epic proportions (sort of), fellow Letterboxders; a journey through Middle-Earth. Or film versions of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, as it were, in light of the recent adaptation of his beloved novel, The Hobbit. This quest will take me through five films – yes five, including the trilogy and the two animated adaptations from the ‘70’s, and it begins here, with the 1977 televised version of The Hobbit.
So yeah. It begins. Of the five, this is the only one I haven’t seen previously, but I love the ‘78 animated version of LotR and thus was likely to enjoy this too. With a running time of only 77 minutes and given that it was made for television, this manages to deliver a succinct retelling of Tolkien’s tale, albeit an oft rushed one (though that is to do with the limited runtime, I suppose). If you are familiar with the novel it’ll make more sense, but even if not it’s a simple enough tale.
Though character development is largely sparse in the Dwarvern Company, Bilbo and Gandalf are written nicely enough. I don’t think the novel has as much on the building of character as LotR either. There is some nice voice acting on offer however, from the likes of Orson Bean, John Huston and Jack DeLeon. Richard Boone is fairly disappointing as Smaug though. The animation is slightly odd but you get used to it over the film. The Dwarves look like a company of deranged old men with alien foreheads, Gandalf a wizened old crook with an inhumanly pointy nose, and old mister Bilbo Baggins himself is akin to a ‘50’s housewife.
It has enough memorable scenes to make it well worth the while too. The fight with the goblins, although lasting about five minutes, is like a scene from some Japanese Anime and just awesome. This is just before the dozy fool Balin propels Bilbo down a cavernous tunnel, where he meets some half-human, half-frog troglodyte named Gollum. Bear in mind this all happens within the film’s first half hour. I later learned that the animation team would later form Studio Ghibli, which explains everything really; the influence on their later works is very evident. Smaug in particular would look at home in any Ghibli picture.
One issue I had, however, is that the soundtrack is horrendous. Whoever was responsible for this disgustingly bad musical arrangement needs a good talking to. Seriously, it’s so mismatched and just wrong. That’s all really though, it’s an admirable attempt at compressing a sizeable adventure into less than ninety minutes.
VERDICT; All in all, an enjoyable take on the novel, though one that is so unbelievably camp. It’s unintentionally hilarious nowadays, and is worth watching on that alone. It’s all very dreamlike, and if you can overlook the terrible soundtrack you should find some fun in watching it.
3.5/5 or 7/10