The Lord of the Rings has been made almost exclusively for Tolkien devotees. In adapting the long, unwieldy saga, the filmmakers have settled for The Song of Bernadette axiom: "To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who do not believe, no explanation is possible." When I saw the film, the audience cheered each introduction of the books' stars as if it were the opening night of Gone with the Wind. They were celebrating their own fond literary memories, not the characters materializing on screen. Yet their reaction seems to have been anticipated in the special care given such favorites as the Uriah Heepish Gollum, the Sancho Panchoesque Samwise, and the highly theatrical Gandalf the Wizard; and the audience seemed not to mind the strategy of speeding over the highlights of the book's dense plotting.

I have no idea whether The Lord of the Rings will be intelligible to the uninitiated. The film never gets around to introducing adequately the villian of the first major battle, not to mention the heavy of the climactic, yet-to-be-filmed fall of Mordor. It picks up most of the characters on the run, so to speak, and for a cartoon feature is extraordinarily short on establishing shots, voiceover narration, and title plates. Tolkien's maps, the sections of the book most dogeared by readers anxious to follow a complex odyssey through overlapping kingdoms, are not referred to on the screen. Either Bakshi has miscalculated here, or is presuming again on the reader's acquaintance. I suspect a mixture of both as well as a last-minute draconian editing in order to get the film out to the winter-holiday crowds. At present, Lord of the Rings is down to 133 minutes, but that is still an exhausting length for animation, the richest, most demanding form of film….

The intimate interplay among the hobbit heroes, between Frodo and Samwise, for instance, or between Frodo and Bilbo, is expressive in a way never before attained by cartoon characters. They contribute a new heart to the work, a firm base on which Bakshi may yet create a great film.

The crowd scenes are a more mixed blessing. When the simulation of humans is realistic, as in the inn at Bree, it's like watching pop-up cardboard figures behind a wavy glass. The scenes of groups running or fighting, on the other hand, are a strikingly powerful form of animated locomotion. Bakshi, unfortunately, has diverted too much of his resources to large-scale battle scenes, the least developmental parts of the story. Besides, the dark army of orcs, even when animated, still come across as human extras with cheap papier-mache face masks, not that different from one of the schlockiest horror films ever made, She Demons.

So, wherein does the promise of Lord of the Rings lie? As the film stands now, it is already the most mature, most sober, and potentially the most sweeping showcase of animation yet fashioned in America. Beside it, Bakshi's earlier works—including the X-rated Fritz the Cat—are child's play under dollops of sophomoric scatology and racist virulence. The public is being offered a truncated, flawed Lord of the Rings, but not a castrated one. If this preemptive, rough-hewn work earns a nest egg and Bakshi gets a stronger fix on the outlines of the odyssey saga, then a master work is in the making.