The film is loosely based on T. H. White's trilogy The Once and Future King, and as expected Disney took fairly large liberties with this version, and it begins with the standard Disney opening - a literal opening of a storybook - where we are told that the good King Uther has died of sickness leaving no heir to rule England. Right off the bat one familiar with the legend will have noticed that Disney has decided to leave out the whole Uther "raping" the fair Igraine and the handing over of the child of this union to Merlin, as well his subsequent murder by his enemies. That this was left out of a Disney animated feature is not at all surprising – you can count on one hand the number of times Disney animated movies have included rape, the answer, of course, being zero - but the ongoing Disneyfication of classic tales still irks me a little. What does happen is that a sword miraculously appears in London (a version of London a few centuries too early I might add) embedded inside an anvil, with the inscription, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king, born of England." Unfortunately, no one is able to perform this feat so England is plunged into a Dark Age.
We are then introduced to twelve-year-old Arthur (Rickie Sorensen), an orphan boy being raised by boorish knight Sir Ector (Sebastian Cabot) and tormented by the brutish lug Kay (Norman Alden), and his days are either spent squiring for Kay or spending them as their kitchen slave. This all changes when Merlin (Karl Swenson) enters the picture and decides, for unknown reasons, that Arthur needs an education, but this so-called education mainly focus on turning the poor boy into various animals – stuff like mathematics and the sciences must have hit the editing room floor– so he's turned into a little fish to learn that brains are more important than brawn, into a bird to learn the majesty of flight, and then into a squirrel to learn about the power of love.
Now, this last sequence is truly baffling as Arthur/squirrel has a cute girl squirrel fall madly in love with him and when he asks Merlin for help he is told, "She has chosen you and squirrels mate for life." Merlin being a dick is a theme here and Arthur is only turned back into a boy when another amorous squirrel fixates on Merlin, which causes the wizard to change them both back to human form to escape her paws. We are then left with the disturbing image of a cute girl squirrel crying as Arthur leaves her.
Sir Ector learns that the people have given up on waiting for some bloke to pull the "sword from the stone" and have set up a grand tournament where knightly contests will determine who will be crowned king of all England. This leads to our group heading to London so that Kay can enter the tournament, and it's while young Arthur is watching the fighting that he realizes he's forgotten Kay's sword. Unfortunately, the inn where he left the sword is locked so Arthur grabs the only sword he can find, which of course turns out to be the fabled Sword in the Stone. Arthur pulls the sword free and against his will, he is then crowned King of England. Which is certainly a strange way to pick a ruler but still better than the Electoral College.
To say this movie was in desperate in need of a plot would be a vast understatement, and someone should have explained to the screenwriters that if you're going to take one of the least interesting moments of the Arthurian myth you really need a more solid story to hang it all on, at least one with some decent conflict, but in this movie all we get in the way of conflict is the abuse from Arthur's boorish adoptive family and a mangy wolf that is a threat to nobody.
The Big Bad Wolf he's not.
Eventually, the great Mad Madam Mim (Martha Wentworth) makes an appearance, she being Merlin's magical rival and the sole reason to be watching this movie, and it's upon her learning of Arthur's importance to Merlin that she tries to kill the poor kid. Now, this does lead to the best part of this movie's short running time, the very fun wizards duel, and it is in this sequence that we are treated to some truly excellent character animation as we watch Merlin and Mim transform from one brilliantly clever creature into another, sadly the character of Mim enters and exits the picture so quickly that she has no lasting effect on this movie's so-called plot.
Disney's The Sword in the Stone is easily one of the more forgettable entries in the studios animated history and should be watched mostly out of curiosity or for the pure enjoyment of that magic duel between Merlin and Mad Madam Mim as there really isn't much else on hand to for a viewer to become engaged with. Merlin's a bit of a dick, poor Arthur has almost no character at all, and the entertaining Mad Madam Mim arrives too late to do more than briefly bolster the proceedings. The Sword in the Stone would have probably worked better as one of Disney's animated shorts because what we got here barely able to sustains its brief 79-minute running time. This may not be the worst adaptation of the King Arthur legend but from Disney, one expects a little more than a simple average tale, which is all The Sword in the Stone could generously be called. Now we just have to wait for the inevitable Disney live-action remake, I'm sure it will be brilliant.
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