beautiful monsters

Why oh why?

Last night I could’ve been leaning against the bar sipping a glass of wine, surrounded by half the queer women in Wellington, listening to the sharp tongued / honey sweet rock goddess Charlotte Sometimes… But, I wasn’t.

Mid-afternoon Iona phoned and invited me to come over to watch a DVD. Something about singing and sillyness and a king… But I was in a dazed and confused state (I was functioning on two hours sleep, I’d just been bounced by a hyperactive dog, and I was still trying to work out where X was or wasn’t after a perplexing conversation…) All the details blurred out, my mind focussing on that one word, DVD, which in my mind is associated with vampires and Alyson Hannigan. For a few moments I weighed up the options. Charlotte Yates VS DVD. Delicious melodies VS staring at a screen. Intriguing lyrics VS staring at a screen that may at some point during the evening involve vampires and Alyson Hannigan. Stunning musicianship VS staring at a screen that will definitely involve warmth and curling up on couches and purring cats and cups of tea and lovely company and a total absence of Smoky Bar Syndrome. The DVD won.

It turned out to be a 1979 animation of Return of the King. I’ve seen some brilliant and ingenious animation over the years… and, in my capacity as a babysitter I have been witness to some pretty damn awful animation. Return of the King was firmly in the latter camp. This was not the clever arty sort of animation you might encounter in a film festival or down at the Embassy. This was the other sort. The sort of animation you expect the kids to be watching on a Saturday morning while they eat their cocopops.

Later on A filled me in on the details. Apparently someone had animated the first book and a half of LOTR but it flopped and so the sequel never happened. And then Rankin and Bass stepped in. Apparently these guys had already done a kiddy cartoon version of The Hobbit. That explained a lot. They must have blown their entire budget before they started on Return of the King.

Because the story begins with the third book of a trilogy (and the earlier animation only got halfway through the second book) a lot of exposition is required. Rankin and Bass get around this by introducing rather an ingenious device. Beware the Minstrel of DOOM!!! Oh, sorry, did I say doom? I meant the minstrel of Gondor. Think “Last week on Lord of the Rings,” with loads of confusing flashbacks and flashforwards, set to an endearing little ballad called “Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.”

Lord of the rings should never have been made into a cartoon, let alone a musical cartoon. Oh God it was painful! The lyrics were so clever they rhymed. “Beware, the power is a power never known / beware, the power that was simple now has grown.” Worst of all was a song called “Tomorrow will be a better day.” This works better with cute orphans then with big nosed hobbits.

Oh yeah, and then there were the noses. Big fat noses. Curved beak-like noses. Long pointy noses. And the big bushy eyebrows – even the spider had big bushy eyebrows.

Beware the noses of Doom!

The characters were rather unnerving. Sam was an earnest Fundie Christian with a crush on Frodo, a big nose, and a tendancy to shake his fist at the sky. He spouted lines like “Bless you, sir, for your bravery. I ask you Lord - give me the strength! Give me the strength to try once more! God help us!”

Elrond wandered around with a dazed expression on his face, and a ring of stars orbiting his head as though he’d recently been hit by a frying-pan.

And I didn’t know what to make of those blue CareBears with sharp pointy teeth.

The orcs even had their own theme song, a catchy marching number called Where there’s a Whip there’s a Way.
Did I mention that the script could have been the remains of a camp skit put on by a bunch of third form boys? They took every opportunity they could to capitalise on the fact that Frodo and Sam were heading towards the Crack of Doom. [Picture immature boys snorting with laugher... "the crack of doom, the crack of doooooooooooom..."]

This movie was supposedly aimed at kids, but even as an adult who is familiar with the books I got totally lost. The story leaped and jumped around with no explanation whatsoever. Sometimes the dialogue didn’t match what was happening in the pictures, and none of it matched the book. Key elements of the plot were left out entirely, while other parts of the movie were totally made up. I have doubts about whether anyone involved actually read the book.

Animation sequences got recycled over and over. The movie jerked along at an average rate of one frame per second. I think at some points the animators got bored and wandered off to pay a round of scrabble, leaving Gandalf to dribble a confusing monologue without his lips even moving.

And then at the end Gandalf suddenly informed us that the hobbits are gradually getting taller and turning into humans. Aw… Huh?

Best reviews I found on the net;

“Most disturbing is the fact that Merry is voiced by Casey Kasem, which makes for a confusing cartoon experience. Hearing Shaggy's voice coming from a hobbit can send an unwary Gen-Xer into fits of hysterics. Zoiks! Like, it's the Nazgul, Scoob!”

“These singers are left in charge of conveying almost all the emotion and plot of Frodo and Sam's end of the story, and they do it with the subtlety and grace of a three year old who's just discovered that he can make noise by clanging pots together. Imagine reading the Rings trilogy while someone next to you screams at every page, ‘The Ring is evil! It corrupts people! Frodo has to destroy it!’ and you will still not begin to understand how intrusive these songs are.”

“Try the Return of the King drinking game. Everyone on one half of the room has to drink a shot everytime Galdalf says “The tide has turned yet again.” Everyone on the other half of the room has to have a shot when Sam says the word “Accursed,” or shakes his fist at the sky.”

You think the pictures are bad? You should’ve heard the songs!

Posted by Fionnaigh at May 12, 2003 09:32 AM