The Sword in the Stone is one of the scratchiest Disney movies. At the time they were still experimenting with and getting to know the Xerox system, allowing them to produce animation with a smaller budget, but with a noticeably rougher outlines and simpler character models. And it shows. The Sword in the Stone is one of the worst looking Disney films, there's really no way around it. But, it makes up for that, at least partially, with some catchy tunes from the Sherman Brothers, and with fun, memorable characters.
The story is basically that from T. H. Stone's novel of the same name. Merlin is a wizard who ages backwards in time - it's complicated - and he's the one who mentors Arthur Pendragon in his early days as a page in a distant, rural castle in the English countryside. That mentoring mostly consisting of him changing Arthur into various animals and watching as he almost gets eaten. Happy fun times for the whole family.
In all seriousness though, Merlin is a great character. Good lines, classic character design, the best song in the whole film and his various hijinks with Arthur's life do keep us entertained throughout the whole film.
What keeps this from being a greater Disney film is that the story itself doesn't really contain all that much and that the side characters are not that interesting. In the book we have knights, creatures of the forest, Robin Hood of all things, villagers, castle folk. None of which we see in this film. It's just Merlin, non-speaking animals and Arthur most of the time. It's kind of fun, but the book had potential for so much more. Imagine if they did King Arthur during the 90s, in the middle of Disney Renaissance. That would have been amazing. Just think about it.
In the end The Sword in the Stone is a perfectly good children's film with a more relaxed tone than was typical for a Disney film at the time. It's not bad, but it's unfortunately not great either.
The story is basically that from T. H. Stone's novel of the same name. Merlin is a wizard who ages backwards in time - it's complicated - and he's the one who mentors Arthur Pendragon in his early days as a page in a distant, rural castle in the English countryside. That mentoring mostly consisting of him changing Arthur into various animals and watching as he almost gets eaten. Happy fun times for the whole family.
In all seriousness though, Merlin is a great character. Good lines, classic character design, the best song in the whole film and his various hijinks with Arthur's life do keep us entertained throughout the whole film.
What keeps this from being a greater Disney film is that the story itself doesn't really contain all that much and that the side characters are not that interesting. In the book we have knights, creatures of the forest, Robin Hood of all things, villagers, castle folk. None of which we see in this film. It's just Merlin, non-speaking animals and Arthur most of the time. It's kind of fun, but the book had potential for so much more. Imagine if they did King Arthur during the 90s, in the middle of Disney Renaissance. That would have been amazing. Just think about it.
In the end The Sword in the Stone is a perfectly good children's film with a more relaxed tone than was typical for a Disney film at the time. It's not bad, but it's unfortunately not great either.