The Sword in the Stone

One of Disney's greatest embarrassments, 'The Sword in the Stone' is the studio's dullest and most unimaginative feature before the seventies. Even the Sherman Brothers - the excellent studio composers, do not manage to make it salveageable with their songs which are rarely more than mildly entertaining. The script is the real culprit, having the predictability and emptiness of something a young adolescent could have penned. None of the characters exactly jump off the screen with excess vibrancy; Merlin the Magician falls between the stools of commanding authority and lovable but effectual bumbling - he is merely silly; The young Arthur, in some ways a blueprint for Mowgli, has a mere trace of that later character's fire and winning naivety. The story ambles, almost aimlessly, from episode to episode, each new scene being memorable only for its vacuity by comparison with those from the great Disney movies before and after. The Wizard's duel is at least engaging. Also, Disney rarely fails on imagery and colur and here the visuals are indeed lovely. An effective balance is found, here, between the over fussy detail of the 1959 'Sleeping Beauty' backgrounds and the richly coloured Xerox images of the 1961 top grosser 'One hundred and One Dalmatians.