The Sword and the Stone (1963)

The Sword and the Stone (1963)

Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman

Starring: Rickie Sorensen, Karl Swenson, Junius Matthews

This was my favorite Disney film as a kid, and as it turns out, it still is. Isn’t that strange how it works out?

The Sword and the Stone is vaguely based off of Arthurian legend, with Merlin the magician taking a young Arthur, or “Wart” as he’s called in the film, under his wing and teaching him lessons about being a fish and love and how to fly. You know, important things you have to know if you’re a king.

It’s funny, I never noticed until watching it this time that there really isn’t a plot or conflict in this movie. It’s just three adventures/lessons as the story meanders to the point where Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone. What it lacks in traditional organization, it makes up for in characterization. Really, Merlin in this is my favorite Disney character ever. He’s great, how he’s kinda from “modern” times, and yet he’s still the classic Merlin figure. They made him more bumbling and scatterbrained, but it makes him a lovable mentor (even if he is a really terrible one).

Also, there are just some cool sequences. This is Disney’s second film using xerography, and there are massive improvements over One Hundred and One Dalmatians. To show off how much more stuff they could do now, they’ve got tons of magical crap going on all the time. As soon as I saw the magical dish washing sequence, I was basically drowned in nostalgia.

Which is another reason why I’m not too big on reviewing these old Disney movies that I’ve seen a thousand times. There’s no way I could be impartial about a review for The Sword and the Stone. It’s the movie that made me interested in Arthurian legend, which drove me to read “The Once and Future King” and all those other books I read as a kid. Even though I realize there’s no conflict, it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the film. If I hadn’t seen it before, you better believe I’d be complaining about inaccuracies and pacing and what have you. Oh well, guess I’ll just have to LIKE a movie every once in a while.