Review of The Sword in the Stone (1963) by Steven K — 19 Sep 2009

The first Disney movie to really disappoint me, during this re-watch of the Disney animated catalog. It seems that all they have is a premise (a pretty good one, actually. An animated movie about King Arthur.) But they have not much of anything else, in terms of plot, so they stretch it with useless "comedic" scenes, with Merlin turning Wart into several different animals in attempts to teach him "lessons". I often found myself wondering what the hell each "lesson" was for. Honestly, most of it didn't further the plot, nor did it develop the characters much. It's mere purpose seemed to be entertaining, yet it wasn't that entertaining, as these characters didn't particular feel all that endearing. I mean, if you're not gonna have a point to any of the events of the story, atleast make it fun.

So, when Wart finally pulls the sword out of the stone, and none of these aforementioned "lessons" actually plays a role in the plot itself or development of Wart as a character, the relative uselessness of basically the entire movie beforehand becomes glaringly obvious. Combine that with the fact that there's really no actual, credible conflict in this story, and you basically have yourself a movie that felt like it spent the entire time spinning it's wheels, but getting absolutely nowhere.