“The Sword in the Stone” is one of Disney’s lesser-known animated features, and probably with good reason. It’s just not a very interesting or charming film, and pales in comparison to fare like “The Jungle Book” and “Alice in Wonderland.” It tells the tale of Wart, a young boy living in merry old England. He is, of course, an unnamed young King Arthur, and the movie purports to tell of his first meetings with Merlin, and how he came to pull the sword from the stone. Problem being is that it’s all something of a washout. The bulk of the film is spent with Merlin turning Wart into various critters – a fish, a squirrel, and finally a bird – in order to teach him something about survival. Each sequence takes up a good ten minutes of the 80-minute film, and there’s a song to go along with each transformation. Most of the music isn’t very good and the film didn’t produce even a single classic Disney tune that we all still hum to this day. Further, Wart never has a British accent, and indeed most of the voices in the film border on the unconvincing. Merlin is really the lead, but he’s such a goofy old fuddy-duddy it’s tough to take any interest in what he’s trying to accomplish with the boy. Really the only reason to watch “The Sword in the Stone” is for the animation, which is up to the usual high standard of the era (the film was released in 1963), and one sequence in the third act in which Merlin battles a witch named Madam Mim is probably the only highlight of the otherwise bland tale – but even that can only be admired for the animation, because, unsurprisingly, the entire scene consists of the two characters turning into various critters. By the time Wart/Arthur pulls the sword from the stone, you’ll be pulling out that dusty old disc of “Excalibur” that you haven’t watched in several years.
