The Sword in the Stone

Disney has long been at the forefront of character driven animation and given it's long history of experience, it's easily understandable. When you go back to some of their earlier work you see how much they have improved - Some examples make the improvement seem dramatic. This is one such example.

Young Wart Arthur (Rickie Sorenson) is travelling in the woods with his bigger brother when he comes across a dwelling deep in the forest - The home of Merlin the Magician (Karl Swenson). Merlin has been expecting the young boy to turn up as he has many things to teach him about the world.

Wart takes Merlin back to his fathers castle and from there is taken on a journey into the guises of variouses creatures as Merlin gives the young boy life from different perspectives and teaches him how to adapt with what has been dealt him.

Warts real desire though is to be a knight's squire and he has the opportunity to do so when his brother enters a new years eve jousting competition with the winner being crowned King. It is almost his brothers turn to joust but Wart has forgotten his sword back at the local Inn. Realising no-one is there, they have to find another sword and quick. Over in the corner is a sword sitting inside an anvil atop a rock. Wart pulls out the sword and gives it to his brother. The disbelief of the townsfolk is evident when they realise only the true king can pull out the sword.

Nothing more.

For a 35 year old movie, the transfer holds up pretty well. It actually looks more recent than that but the background sets and animation style give away the era.

Amazingly, the saturation of the film is fine and black level is of a very acceptable level. There are no mpeg artifacts to be seen and given the initial hesitancy some people had to animation on dvd, I'd have to say it survives even better than live action footage.

A smidgen of film dirt and grain is present and accepted. It is presented in full frame which is a slight changed from it's original ratio. It seems the mattes have been opened up rather than any panning and scanning.

Six languages in glorious 1.0 dolby digital. The soundtrack is not that great. Dialogue is clear, mostly.

The real problem with the soundtrack is that the levels fluctuate. I kept thinking I was sitting on the remote for some reason as the levels change dramatically at times. Sometimes it's the sound effects, other times it's the dialogue.

Not being overly critical but at around 36 minute mark, the vocals for Wart seem to be done by someone else. This also occurs later on in the movie and is mildly distracting as I thought there was someone else off screen doing the talking, or even narrating. I almost felt we jumped ahead to when he had grown up until his true voice came back again.

I've got a real bone to pick with Warners/Disney/Buena Vista here. It seems their production values have disappeared. Looking at the entire package, I get a feeling of cheapness. Black, flimsy amaray casing - mono colored disc cover titling (the cheap and nasty kind) - a menu system with 3 options (chapter, language, play) and not even enough extras to fill a hyrdrogen molecule.

This is a gripe I have with alot of their stuff and you'll be hearing more about this come their other review titles.

This is not one of their classics and it shows. There's a real problem with this film - the story has hardly anything to do with the title until about 2 minutes from the end. I went in expecting to see the tale of a young boy Arthur who overcomes his obstacles and one day becomes King. Fair enough, that's what the story is but it needed to be fleshed out alot more and provide a better conclusion.

It had real potential to be more than what we're given. At one stage when Wart is transformed into a squirrel, he befriends a female squirrel who has found her mate. After the ensuing dramas, Wart is transformed back into a boy, still with unsuspecting female squirrel in arms. Leaving her broken hearted and alone. Merlin, with all his magic could have easily changed the squirrel into a girl and given the movie a romantic edge, maybe even bring her around the end of the movie to complete it better.

Ok, so some movies are predictable but when you think you know what will happen and it doesn't eventuate as good as you'd hope you start to crave for the predictable.

As a dvd decent, as a movie, "No soup for you".