Review of Watership Down (1978) by Bryan P — 26 Jan 2010

To be honest, I find it hard to rate this film.

First off, the book is my favourite book of all time and I deeply enjoyed the storyline, the characters, nearly everything in the book. However, the film just seems to be lost somewhere for me.

Whilst staying true to the majority of the book's plot, I found that I sometimes got annoyed at how events in the book hadn't been presented in chronological order, how several characters were missed out and how events were misconstrued. Yes, I know it was the late 70's and the film needed to be 1hr 30mins long, but it just didn't seem to do it justice for me. Also, bits of Lapine language from the book were thrown here and there into the script so that anyone watching who hadn't read the book wouldn't know what the rabbits were talking about. Could they not have thought of subtitles?

The presentation was alright for me: sure, the animation kept the natural charm and atmosphere of the book and it helped with the violent, dark nature of the book, but today it looks dated even for the time period. To see what I mean, look at some of the earlier animated films before this (mainly Disney) in the 50's and 60's: the animation in those were hand drawn and on top form, whilst this is 1978 stuff where scenes fade in and out and scenes from later on in the film are seen in flashbacks: what the hell?! Also, the colour scheme of the rabbits' kept changing: for example, the fur colour of Hazel (a main character in the film) starts as light brown, then becomes dark-black brown, then light grey, then back to dark-brown, then back to light brown, then to a brownish-yellow colour!

Fortunately, the voice acting is decent: John Hurt and Richard Briers fit their roles as Hazel and Fiver rather well, whilst Harry Andrews sounds brutal as the tyrannical General Woundwort.

Overall, a fair adaptation of a classic with an average presentation and OK voice acting. A remake could do it justice, but only if they made it longer, darker, truer to the source material and presented it better.