Avis Metacritic

Martin Rosen’s eloquent, wondrous film offers a deceivingly simple yet powerful view of a war-ridden rabbit society.

Rosen has not so much adapted Watership Down as he has intelligently condensed it, and compensated for the simplifications with pleasures books can't provide. [20 Jan 1979]

It’s the work of a director deeply enamored of his source material, and determined to do right by it, even if it means frightening kids, baffling parents, and embracing whatever style works in the moment.

The spirit of the book is captured here as the rabbits, faced with problems of ecology, are forced to find a new home. Their trek is filled with surprises and adventures, as well as bloodshed. The job of personifying the rabbits is nicely achieved due to expert readings by the cast.

Barely adequate as a pictorial rendering of the book, the movie still thrives on the rousing nature of this unlikely but enthralling epic. [08 Nov 1978, p.C1]

Rosen's film has none of Baskshi's visual razzle-dazzle, but it is loaded with character, and it has the relentless momentum of a good war movie. [20 Nov 1978, p.79]

The animation techniques are sophisticated but the story tends to get bogged down in pop philosophy. [01 Mar 2015, p.N]

Rosen goes out of his way to avoid Disney's stylized movements and character touches, but ends by making his characters all look, sound, and act alike—conditions hardly hospitable to dramatic involvement. The animation may be naturalistic, but the fallacy is as pathetic as ever.

The 'camera' takes a conventionally objective viewpoint, perpetually rolling over rolling countryside, which effectively robs the plot of all its terror and tension. And the bunnies are a crudely drawn, charmless bunch, with the final nail provided by the soundtrack's famous voices, who help turn the film into a radio play.