Robin Hood

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The reader may recall that the Disney animation department experienced some down time between their Golden Age in the late 1930s, 40s, and 50s and their Renaissance in the late 1980s and beyond. In other words, the 1960s and 70s were not good to them. Walt Disney's "The Black Hole" from 1979 was a good description of the condition of their children's animated movies. Anyway, Disney's animated "Robin Hood" comes from this period, 1973, and it's a fair indication of why things were not so rosy for the studio back then.

Disney's "Robin Hood" replaces the characters of legend with animals, which in and of itself is not a bad idea. But it uses rather bland characters or ones repeated from earlier films, bland songs and music, bland adventures, and bland artwork to tell its story. The result is not an entirely bad film, but something less than scintillating, too. Sort of, you know, bland.

Put it this way: Disney did a better job with the Robin Hood tale some twenty years earlier with their live-action "Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men." That one was nowhere near as rousing an adventure as the older Errol Flynn version, but it had more energy and life than this tepid cartoon remake.

You know the story. King Richard has gone on a Crusade to the Holy Land, leaving England in the charge of his treacherous and greedy brother, Prince John, who is taxing the populace to death. A preface tells us that "Robin Hood was the people's only hope. He robbed from the rich to feed the poor. He was beloved of all." Beloved of all? You'd expect Mickey Mouse in the role, but instead Robin is a wily fox. Several familiar incidents make up the bulk of the plot: Robin and his men robbing Prince John, Robin's relationship with Maid Marian, the big archery tournament, and a daring escape from Prince John's castle. What's more, all of the expected characters are here, albeit in animal guise, and recognizable actors voice most of them. To be ensure that you know who they are, Disney even identifies them at the beginning of the picture.

Robin Hood is, as I said, a fox, elegantly voiced by Brian Bedford. Maid Marian is, appropriately, a vixen, voiced Monica Evans. Then, there's Little John, a bear voiced by Phil Harris and right out of Disney's "Jungle Book." Prince John is a lion, voiced wonderfully by Peter Ustinov. Prince John's counselor is Sir Hiss, a snake in the grass, voiced by Terry-Thomas. Friar Tuck is a badger, voiced by Andy Devine. The Sheriff of Nottingham is a wolf, voiced by Pat Buttram. Lady Kluck, Maid Marian's maid, is a chicken voiced by Carole Shelley. And the narrator of the story, Alan-A-Dale, a troubadour, is a rooster voiced by singer Roger Miller. The character voices are quite distinctive, but the script gives the actors almost nothing funny or witty to say, so it's something of a waste. Moreover, some of the voices are clearly British, while others are plainly American. I doubt that children will mind this, but for adults it can be a little disconcerting.

Then, there are the songs, of course. Hardly a Disney cartoon goes by without songs. Yet even here, the tunes are not particularly memorable. The ones written and sung by Roger Miller are among the best: "Oo-de-lally," "Not in Nottingham," and "Whistle-Stop." There's a song called "Love," written by Floyd Huddleston and George Bruns and sung by Nancy Adams, that goes nowhere. And there's an attempt at the kind of rousing gaiety that Phil Harris injected into "The Jungle Book" with his rendition of Johnny Mercer's "The Phony King of England, but it, too, seems forced and empty.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the film, though, is its artwork. Disney chose, for whatever reason, to go with a simpler animation style than usual for them in a big, theatrical release. Frankly, it looks cheap and is not up to the studio's standards. In fact, it looks a lot like the work for their "Winnie the Pooh" short subjects and for many of their television productions. The characters lack much depth or expression. And although the background paintings sometimes look good (the opening scenes in the forest, for instance, and Prince John's castle), they are only intermittently detailed or polished, and they are often absent altogether.

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