Movie Thoughts: The Sword in the Stone (1963)

• Released: 21 June 1963
• Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman, Clyde Geronimi, David Hand
• Running time: 1 h 19 min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

A boy is being tutored by the wizard Merlin and becomes king of England.

My Thoughts

Over a year ago now, I started my journey in watching every movie of the Disney animated canon (sans the sequels) in order. I haven't completed this journey yet due to fatigue and I haven't reviewed all movies I've come across until now, but I do plan on reviewing each one in the future. Who knows, I may even go back one day and review the ones that I missed. It'd be pretty cool to have done a Movie Thoughts on every film.

So enter The Sword in the Stone. Not a movie I have any sort of nostalgia for. In fact, I only first saw it like two years ago. So does it hold up?

Honestly, I'm going to have to say, no, for the most part. There's very little plot or and it feels very mundane. It's honestly just Wart learning things from Merlin until he finally is crowned king of England. There's no real overarching plot, Merlin isn't really directly training Wart to become king, he's just giving him an education for the sake of it.

And while that is obviously good, and I do like some of things it teaches (brawn over brains) there's honestly very little information children will take away from this. There aren't that many actual lessons on screen like I was expecting when they said it was all about education. It's more just Merlin and Wart hanging around and transforming into different animals and getting into situations than actual lessons being told.

The movie was very mundane, but part of me actually really liked that. It makes it hard to review structure-wise since there isn't a real plot or anything, but I did like this calm tone we had where it was just mostly sitting around and seeing this mentor and child hang out. But then came the rather uncomfortable "female squirrel assault" scene. The fact that these squirrels can't keep their hands where they belong is enough, but that one of them also consistently touches Wart though he clearly feels uncomfortable? Reminder, he's twelve years old. Just...yikes, and honestly the reason for this movie's low rating. Merlin doesn't even do anything about it until he himself starts becoming involved with another female squirrel. I was otherwise enjoying it fine. True, it wasn't perfect, but it might've been a three/three-and-a-half star rating if the squirrel assault scene hadn't been there. 

Anyways, some other things that I disliked: the sketchy animation; it just doesn't work for me. The fact that Mim's duel was pretty much useless since she didn't end up playing a bigger role in the story. How little focus was laid on Wart becoming king. He becomes king, Merlin reappears and that's it. And finally, the songs. They were kind of mediocre if you ask me, some of them are often half-talked which is just annoying.

There was also this one audio clip of Wart going "whoa whoa!" that was re-used like a distracting amount of times. Just felt like I might bring that up.

So, yeah, a movie that's hard to review due to the mundane-ness and the weird structure of the "plot". I did like some parts, especially the beginning and Merlin's character, but after the squirrel assault scene I was ready to give up.