majka@ubc-vision.UUCP (Marc Majka) (03/14/84)
From: Marc Majka <majka@ubc-vision.UUCP> The movie is a cartoon version of the book of the same name by Peter S. Beagle. It is geared for children, and at that level it is a good film. Unfortunately, this reduces the depth of the story. The evil and frightful monsters and not so evil, nor as frightful, as the book has them. The Unicorn, and the initial woodland scenes, are a bit too cute. The character of Smedrick (sp?) is well done, except that he is younger than I had imagined. The credits supprised me. The film is a Japanese production. Perhaps this story has universal appeal. Take your kids to see this one. If you don't have any, wait until it hits television. Marc Majka - UBC Laboratory for Computational Vision
boyajian@akov68.DEC (03/17/84)
I finally saw THE LAST UNICORN a couple of months ago on cable. Maybe it's because I haven't read the book, but I really enjoyed the movie (I'm some- what a sucker for Japanese animation). Note to Betsy Perry: Hanna Barbera did *not* produce the film. Rankin/ Bass, who, as someone else pointed out, did the made-for-TV animated feature of THE HOBBIT and THE RETURN OF THE KING, produced it, though they contracted the job of actually doing the art/animation to a japanese company. Second of all, as a note to someone else (I forget who -- sorry), I don't believe that all of the songs were written by Jimmy Webb, but only those sung by the principal characters. There were other "incidental" songs that were written and performed by the almost-forgotten rock group America. Even the Webb songs I didn't mind; the real problem was that Jeff Bridges (who supplied the voice for Prince, and is an actor I admire) couldn't sing to save his life. People should also note, before they start pissing off about how awful an adaptation of the book the movie was, that Peter Beagle *wrote the screenplay for the film himself*. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard) UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian) ARPA: (decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian@Shasta)