Pipkin will be clearly a battle of whether you feel you need to remain faithful to how Richard Adams represented the character or if you don't mind some creative tinkering.
Roy Kinnear voiced Pipkin in the film. Most Americans likely recognize him as the father of Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As presented in the book, Pipkin is clearly a small rabbit, but as old as Fiver, and we didn't gather either rabbit was a child...they both were young, but had already reached adulthood in rabbit years. Therefore, neither Pipkin or Fiver was given a young voice in the film. This is perfectly fine, as "runt" does not automatically mean "child". Kinnear's performance, while nothing earth shattering as Pipkin didn't have a lot of speaking roles, I felt may be a tad out of place. Smaller people typically do not have super-deep voices, and maybe that a lousy judgment on my part to expect Pipkin to have a higher pitched voice, representing his smaller stature compared to say, Bigwig. It is what it is.
Now, you have the other side of the coin, Pipkin in the TV series where creativity clearly was at work as Pipkin was changed to a young rabbit, not yet hitting adulthood. Elliot Henderson-Boyle provides his voice for Season 1 and 2, and possibly 3 as well, even though he isn't listed on the roster in the credits. It sounded like the same kid though I'm seeing conflicting information on the matter. Anyway, perhaps this change was done to minimize questioning among younger audience members why such a small rabbit had the voice of an adult. I suppose it could seem odd, so the kid character made more sense if your audience isn't the adults that read the book. Boyle's voice in some instances sounded like he was trying to fake the accent and force it out there (listen to him say "Oh!" a few times). Of course that's silly because he is from the UK, but maybe this is just an example of trying too hard to voice act. It just seemed over the top a couple of times.
The win goes to Roy Kinnear as Pipkin....I just am one of those book purists that saw Pipkin as a runt, but not a child.
Topic: Battle of the Voices: Pipkin (Read 1290 times)