(Ralph Bakshi's animation); Too bad he ran out of money in midstream. Ambitious, sometimes very effective visualization of the great J. R. R. Tolkein trilogy. The idea of animating "Lord of the Rings" was actually the basis of an early 1960's story by Vernor Vinge, in which a computer scientist steals massive amounts of computer time to digitally animate the work. Ralph has his animators do it the old fashioned way, with rotoscoped Orc battles. A great change from the over-sweet Disney features, with a much darker vision. Unfortunately, the Disney machine has gigabucks to play with, and Bakshi has to scrape for a few hundred thou.
