The Sword in the Stone (1963)

After a jazzy romp through modern London, Walt Disney jettisons us back in time for a medieval fantasy. Tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are ripe for film adaptations. The House of Mouse takes a kid-friendly approach by adapting the first installment of T.H. White’s series The Once and Future King. By doing so, Disney finds plenty of ways to dazzle the eyes but they come up short in the quest to dazzle the mind.

When King Uther Pendragon passes away a sword appears in a London courtyard. It pierces both an anvil and the stone beneath it. An inscription on the sword declares "Who so Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of England." Centuries pass and the stone is forgotten about by most. Forgotten, that is, until a young squire pulls the sword out without realizing what it is.

Did I just give the ending away? If you know nothing about King Arthur, then I apologize. For the 98% of you who already know this tale, you should know that this film has almost nothing to do with the titular sword. It merely bookends the tale of young Wart (Arthur), a peasant boy adopted as a student by the roaming wizard Merlin. Wart balances Merlin’s creative lessons with being a squire for his foster brother Kay, a wannabe knight.

Maybe it’s because I never read the book it’s based on. Maybe it’s because I’m not an aficionado of British fantasy literature. Maybe it’s because I’m an American. Whatever the reason, The Sword in the Stone just doesn’t do it for me. There are a number of cinematic weaknesses present but it’s all the style missteps that hurt it the most.

The Xerox animation technique that Disney started with One Hundred and One Dalmatians still looks rough. It helps the Middle Ages setting look appropriately grim and gritty but the sketch lines inside the animated characters are still distracting. The outlines of the characters flow well but the lack of consistency and continuity inside those lines makes the final product look a bit sloppy. That is not a word that should be used to describe a Disney product.

While One Hundred and One Dalmatians contained very few songs, this film tries to inject a little musical whimsy in its reels. The end result leaves a lot to be desired. None of the tunes are memorable and the most noteworthy song "Higitus Figitus" feels like a poor imitation of "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo." This is an even larger detriment than it initially appears, given that this movie is geared more towards kids. If the kids don’t come away humming the tunes, you’ve missed the mark.

Very few Disney films up to this point have focused so sharply on children. Peter Pan was the last production to do so but that was released a decade before The Sword in the Stone. Disney films have always played well with younger audiences but they have always worked for adults as well. This film marks the first sharp divide between content directed at children and content directed at adults. Merlin drops references to a number of people, places and ideas that will go over younger kids’ heads.

On the flipside, parents might not be as mesmerized with the colorful animation, especially not if they’ve seen plenty of Disney films before this one. That’s not to say that the animation is inferior. The Xerox technique is still heavily flawed but the animators pull off a few neat tricks throughout. Merlin’s lessons all involve turning himself and Wart into animals. When they transform, they still retain some kind of identifiable characteristic to provide a reference point. This is also the case when Merlin engages in battle with Madam Mim. All of their transformations flow seamlessly.

Despite its highly regarded source material, the story feels incomplete. From the beginning it’s obvious that Wart will be the one to pull the sword from the stone. There is no central conflict driving the story from Point A to Point B though. Merlin’s lessons are little more than fanciful vignettes to provide Wart with wisdom before he realizes why he needs it. These lessons have nothing to do with Wart’s reason for pulling the sword from the stone, so these sequences could, cynically, be viewed as candy-coated time killers.

The only magic in The Sword in the Stone lies within what Merlin conjures up on the screen. For whatever reason, none of the pieces typically found in the Disney ‘formula’ click this time around. While it still showcases plenty of skill by the animators, this is one of the few truly passable Disney films. It might keep the kids occupied for an hour twenty but if you have any favorite Disney films, my advice is to stick with them.

RATING: 3.25 out of 5