La spada nella roccia

I'm really not much of a Disney fan, and a lot of their films I find are sentimental rubbish, to put it bluntly. This, however, is different. I remember watching this when I was little and finding it hilarious. I hadn't watched it for years until recently when my younger siblings borrowed some videos from a friend. I still find it funny. The animation's nothing amazing, it's done more or less in the style of 101 Dalmations, and the storyline is basic King Arthur stuff (but I do like King Arthur stories anyway). It's the humour that really makes it memorable and charming. The characters have personality, there are no bimbo princesses or princes, and I find myself warming greatly to Merlin and Arthur and even grumpy Archimedes. Well worth watching.

This very nice Disney Classic was based on the children's novel by TH White. This was not yet that very well-known, heavy novel titled "the Once and Future King" that so many later movies were based upon, but the lighthearted earlier version. Many agreed that the later novel has disfigured the first, so that we may be thankful for the Disney version!

Though it does not quite follow the book (this is hardly possible, at times) it is a very good version as animated movies go. Not tedious, though of an age where children were meant to learn something from a movie...

A collectors item!

The 90 minute cartoon is in fact the first chapter of T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King. Made for the kids, Disney does it again taking a classic story and adding fictional animal characters that can talk. Still, Disney remains loyal to the story by keeping many of the characters in the story including Kay, Sr. Pellinoire, and Sir Ector.

Worth watching twice with the family. An animated classic

This movie is another proof of the high quality of the classic Disney films. Today feature films are quite funny too... but they based mostly on simple, crude jokes and spoofing of other topical movies (remember the bullet time-spoof in "Shrek"). There is no substance to think about in it. You can see them, laughing about them...and forgot them almost completely a few years later. Who will remember, i.e., "Ice Age" or "Madagascar" in 40, 50 or 60 years? The old Disney classics are different, there are timeless! "The Sword in the Stone" contains a lot of joyful gags too, but no gag stands above the characters, no joke was made only to fill a hole in the plot. The story, the plot, and the characters are primary. And Disney add not only joyful gags. As Walt himself once said: "For every laugh, there should be a tear." Disney take children always quite seriously, and a lot of his early films contains a lesson for life, sometimes the lesson can be very sad and cruel, like in "Bambi", sometimes lesser sad, like in "The Sword in the Stone"... but can anybody forget the cute little girl squirrel, that was left by Wart, desperately crying and with a broken heart? And Merlin's closing words about love: "Well, yes, in its own way... yes, I'd say it's the most powerful force on Earth"!

This is one of the main ingredient of the famous Disney Magic: Joy and tragedy! Another is the art of hand drawn animation. The quality of the animation went downwards at Disney after WW-II too, slowly, but surely. But in 1963 cel-animation was still on a high level. Not so good as in the golden Era, when "Fantasia", "Pinocchio" or especially "Bambi" set the utmost high standards of perfectionism, but quite better than in "Hercules", "The Lion King" or "The Rescuers down under". 7 of 10 stars for "The Sword in the Stone"! It is not the best of all Disney films, but quite better and deeper than the most of the modern CGI movies!

This isn't usually counted as being one of the top-ranking Disney films, but I insist on not being snobbish in this list, and remembering the films that brought me joy as a kid. Wart gets to be a squirrel, a bird and a fish during this film which plays fast and loose with Arthurian legend. Merlin is great, and his battle with Madam Mim the stuff of legend. It's not big, it's not clever, but it is fun!