Review: The Sword in the Stone


Set in ye olde England where King Uther has died. There’s a sword, it’s in a stone, and only the rightful owner can pluck it and take the throne. Our main character is wannabe squire Arthur, AKA ‘Wart’ who comes into contact with a seemingly prescient wizard named Merlin, who attempts to educate the boy for a higher purpose Arthur does not yet know of. In their way stands sorceress Madame Mim (voiced by Martha Wentworth), who may or may not play the cranky bus driver on “South Park” in another life.

 

Released in 1963, this Disney animated film was the studio’s animated version of the legend of King Arthur. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman (“Sleeping Beauty”, “The Jungle Book”, the underrated “Robin Hood”) and scripted by Bill Peet (“Fantasia”, “Cinderella”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Peter Pan”), it’s a pretty boring film, despite it being one of the lighter interpretations of the legend, which is more my thing than say the much darker and murkier “Excalibur”. Unfortunately, it’s also barely an Arthurian film at all. The Arthur character spends most of the film being nicknamed ‘Wart’, modern geographical names like London are brought up, and the title event only comes into play in the last ten minutes. That’s unforgiveable. Arthur/Wart’s American accent (predominantly voiced by Ricky Sorenson) doesn’t help, either.

 

The songs are pretty bad, but made worse by the fact that none of the cast can actually hold a tune. Thankfully, there’s not too much of it. The bulk of the film is spent with Merlin and Arthur/Wart magically turning themselves into various animal disguises, which gets old really fast. It also doesn’t help that Archimedes the owl seems to cope better in the water than Arthur/Wart in fish form. What the hell?

 

Having said all that, the character of Merlin (voiced by Karl Swenson) is a show-stealer (for whatever that’s worth), and closer to my idea of the character than in some of the darker interpretations of these characters like the overrated “Excalibur”.

 

It’s not as outright terrible as say, “Fantasia” or “Treasure Planet”, just boring, often anachronistic, and barely Arthurian at all. Based on a T.H. White novel, this was not the Magic Kingdom’s finest hour, and sadly it really could’ve been something. There’s a good kids movie there in the basic material, but Disney cocked it up.

 

Rating: C

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