Film No. 44. 6th film shown Sat 03/03/07.
Jason Solomons said "Never counted among Disney classics, but my favourite because Robin was a cool, Flynn style hero and Marian was, well a fox. Peter Ustinov's spoilt brat King John is pure joy and still one of the best ever voice over performances"
3 comments:
The cockrel/minstrel introduces the film as the animals' version of this legend, "how it is, how it was, or whatever". A pretty neat sleight-of-hand trick that offers wonderful artistic license. But... we clearly get one of Disney's low points instead. Stealing from their own larder, cobbled together, and no innovation at all, except for Peter Ustinov who really paves the way for future voice-over performances. I hated the dated pasted-on effect of the characters against all the crude, flat backdrops. Such lazy animation. I did however have a big soft spot for the recorded sound of all the voices. That lovely dry, close-mic quality. Kinda retro sounding. I was also completely surprised and won over by the minstrel's terrific down'n'out, tears-in-beer country song of "ups and downs", when the villagers are all in jail. Sweet stuff. A sort of cross between Harry Nilsson and John Prine.
Spoilt immediately by the nonsensical skip-to-the-end epilogue, where King Richard has mysteriously returned out of the blue, and all is well again! Of course, that is how it was, or whatever.
I've bee a staunch defender of the first principles of this list...... not "the canon", not in themselves masterpieces, but off the beaten track, etc, but this? Decidedly not worthy of recommendation, in my view. Peter Ustinov's delivery of King John apart, the greatest amount of amusement from this movie was got trying to figure out which film the other characters came from. I'm convinced Little John was Balou the Bear in a different costume with nowhere near as many good songs. Don't think it stands up even as a wet afternoon entertainment.
This was one of my children's favorites while growing up.
Post a Comment