Word: tolkien
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...Tolkien...
...care for each other." Says her eleven-year-old son: "For some reasons I'm lucky and for some reasons I'm not. I know lots of things other children don't know. I know how to plant seeds and how to grow a garden. Last spring I read Tolkien and all of James Herriot's books. Oh, and I like C.S. Lewis." The boy does concede that he is "not so hot at arithmetic," but he counters: "I ask a lot of questions. That's how you learn. In school you can't ask questions...
BAKSHI AND COMPANY must be blatant since they do not reach below the surface of the books to convey what Tolkien was really writing about: The books succeed, despite admittedly two-dimensional characterization and large doses of sword fightin' and horse ridin', because Tolkien subtly leads you into his world and somehow makes you care about what goes on there, makes you afraid of the evil which threatens it, and involves you in the adventures as if you were there. Bakshi's world is merely a cartoon, somehow you can't get around that whether you know the books...
Certainly many will applaud this movie as a daring work. It was always there to be done, one supposes, and there are enough Tolkien freaks around who will plunk money down to see their dream come to life...
...Perhaps because some dreams are better left alone lest they shatter at a touch and lose their magic in becoming real. This movie does just that to Tolkien. But that won't stop anyone from turning out the second half of Bakshi's tour de force. Once the Ring took control of its possessor, nothing could stop him from wanting more and more, even if the ultimate result was for the worst. Hollywood has the Ring now, and the business of perversion proceeds as Tolkien might have predicted. "...In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows...