The Sword in the Stone (1963) – Review

Disney’s The Sword in the Stone was an animated retelling of the classic Arthurian tale. Sadly, it focuses solely on the period between Uther Pendragon’s death and young Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone, which is not intrinsically a bad idea, but the fun and fascinating stuff really doesn’t kick in until Arthur meets Guinevere and forms the Round Table.  So what does Disney offer us instead?

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. 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 who is 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 as 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 Disney-fication 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.

Note: In this movie, young Arthur goes by the insulting nickname of Wart, but for the sake of this review, I will be referring to him as Arthur.

We are then introduced to twelve-year-old Arthur (Rickie Sorensen), an orphan boy being raised by the 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 working as their kitchen slave. This all changes when Merlin (Karl Swenson) enters the picture and decides, for unknown reasons, that Arthur needs an education. This so-called education, however, mainly focuses 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.

Note: This is not only a rather sad and depressing moment in a kid’s film, but it’s also not at all that accurate either, as male squirrels actually leave after mating and never think twice about their families.

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 of 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.

Note: At one point in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, young Arthur meets up with the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. Sadly, nothing that interesting happens in this adaptation.

To say this movie was in desperate 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. 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 watch 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 run-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.

Note: Mad Madam Mim is obviously a Disney creation, Merlin’s chief nemesis in the legend being the very powerful enchantress Morgan le Fay, but as she was Arthur’s half-sister, who has an incestuous affair with him to birth the vile Mordred, we can understand Disney not wanting to go in that direction

Disney’s The Sword in the Stone is easily one of the more forgettable entries in the studio’s animated history and should be watched mostly out of curiosity or for the pure enjoyment of that magical duel between Merlin and Mad Madam Mim, as there really isn’t much else on hand 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 is barely able to sustain its brief 79-minute run-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.

“Wait till you get a load of me in glorious CGI.”