DVD : The Sword in the Stone (45th Anniversary Special Edition)

Rating: - One of the best Disney movies ever!!
I LOVE THE SWORD IN THE STONE!! I'm 15, and it's been one of my absolute favorite movie ever since I was a kid. I'm so happy that its come out on DVD! To me you can't help loving it, and you certainly can't stop loving it even when you grow up. Its absolutely hilarious! Who could possibly argue with that? The songs in it are very catchy, the characters are unforgettable, and its a great twist on the traditional Arthurian legend. It may not be one of more famous Disney movies, but to me it is one of the best.

---

Rating: - Put the sword back...
Although not one of the shining gems in Disney's "canon" crown, this movie still has a charming quality some will appreciate.

Loosely based on White's "The Once and Future King", although "Sword in the Stone" does no justice to the original material, it is still a fun filled romp that children will love.

The Transformation bits are the best. The young Wart (the future King Arthur, believe it or not) is transformed into a bird, a fish, and a squirrel to teach Wart lessons that he will need to know once he becomes king. These are the highlights of the film.

Younger audiences will enjoy the dancing dishwashing sequence.

The final conflict between Merlin and Mim is almost anti-climatic. But we do get to see Wart withdraw the Sword from the Stone and become King Arthur. I rather liked the few references to modern technology that Merlin throws at an unknowing Wart. It gives him an aura of "I know what's going to happen" that is sorely needed by Merlin as the wizard that trains Wart.

Note that I would have given this DVD four stars if it had been presented in letterbox format (true 16X9 ratio) as well as the included pan-and-scan version.

Worth looking at for any library of children's videos, and well worth adding to a collection of Disney's classics.

---

Rating: - Great Fun
What's the problem...with some people?!

The style of animation is unique to the time, to what they had at the time...and it's an interesting, almost sketchy look at times. They've since moved beyond that...but it's a part of the studio's history. Anyway, I like it. The film is good.

Merlin is a riot! "When, blasted it all, when!" And his owl...and Wart is a good character, and how can you NOT love the scene when they're squirrels? How cool is that? And you feel sorry for the girl squirrel when she finds out he's a human, and Merlin uses the incident to teach Wart that love is a powerful force...Merlin's always teaching him little lessons, and...

While not the best Disney film, in my mind, I have fond memories of it. It's funny (and not in an over-bearing way), gentle...and smart, with some good music, to boot. Just let yourself enjoy it...

---

Rating: - Late-sixties Disney at their worst.
Along with THE JUNGLE BOOK (which at least has one great hot-jazz musical number to recommend it), this is probably the worst Disney animated film made in Walt's lifetime. A genuinely philistine desecration of T.H. White's masterpiece of a novel, the movie is dumbed-down, shrill, crude, and apallingly unfunny. By this time, three things had seriously damaged the quality of the Disney Studio's animated work. 1: The Disney "style" of adaptation had turned into a rock-hard formula, and not a very good one. 2: Disney had discovered that more cash could be made from relatively cheap live-action sit-comedies (remember the flood of stuff like THE BOATNIKS, or THE WORLD'S GREATEST ATHLETE?), which essentially led to a loss of interest in the cartoons on the part of the studio, and 3: Walt himself lost interest in the movie division generally, following the failure of SLEEPING BEAUTY, and transferred his tremendous energy, talent, and enthusiasm to the creation of Disneyland, which occupied him almost obsessively for the rest of his life. The cinematic results were movies like this one. The current Disney corporate line, "All Disney is classic, all Disney is great" has been bought into buy quite a few comped-by-the-company professional critics, but at the time this movie was released it was generally described by reviewers as junk, and junk it is. The thirty or so years of DisneyCo self-mythologizing allow them to sell nearly anything to parents that has the Disney name on it, but you'd be better off watching moss grow than to sit through this unfortunate thing.

---

Rating: - Enjoyed best when the kids were 2 to 4 years old.
When one watches this movie they keep waiting for it to turn into the story they recognize, it never does and then suddenly the movie is over. We rank this 20th of 41. This is a solid, 3 star movie that has average entertainment value. This was never a movie that the children watched very much once they reached about age 4. But when they were 3 and 4 they did watch and enjoy it.

We had a lot of fun by gathering the family together to rank the 41 Disney movies we have that include some cartoon work. All the kids, ages 6 to 27, participated along with mother and dad. Lion King was selected number 1 of the 41 as the family favorite, but narrowly. Peter Pan was 2. Pete's Dragon 3, Beauty & the beast 4, Sleeping Beauty 5, Snow White 6, Robin Hood 7, 101 Dalmatians 8, Fox and the hound 9, Cinderella is 10th, Rescuers 11, Hunchback of ND 12, Aladdin 13, Aladdin King of Thieves 14, Jungle Book 15, Little Mermaid 16, Hercules 17, Winnie the Pooh 18 and Rescuers Down Under 19.