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Okay so it looks like on October 1 we're getting The Addams Family 2, mid-October we will be getting Sing 2, near the end of the month we are getting Ron's Gone Wrong and Encanto is going to be a Thanksgiving release.

That seems like a lot for the end of the year.

In light of my recent tribute, I am listening to the early 90s Darkwing Duck rap!

Here's another death guys.

Michael K. Williams, who was star of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, was just found dead in his Brooklyn residence at only 54.

www.yahoo.com/entertainment/michael-k-williams-star-wire-203242485.html

To commemorate my very first furry con, I decided to go and review this movie, in addition to it being a request.

Robin Hood (1973)

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Cast: Brian Bedford (Robin Hood), Monica Evans (Maid Marian), Phil Harris (Little John), Roger Miller (Allen-a-Dale the Rooster), Peter Ustinov (Prince John, King Richard), Terry-Thomas (Sir Hiss), Andy Devine (Friar Tuck), Carole Shelley (Lady Kluck), Pat Buttram (Sheriff of Nottingham), George Lindsay (Trigger), Ken Curtis (Nutsy), Billy Whitaker (Skippy), Dana Laurita (Sis), Dora Whitaker (Tagalong), Richie Sanders (Toby)
Runtime: 83 min.
MPAA rating: G (all ages admitted)

This movie is an all-animal retelling of the famous outlaw of Sherwood Forest; where England is under the heel of Prince John, who usurped the throne while King Richard was off fighting in the Crusades, and now is overtaxing the people to the point of poverty. Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men would rob from the rich and give to the poor, while at the same time try to win the hand of the spirited Maid Marian. So, can Robin Hood stay out of trouble long enough to win over the people of England until King Richard can hopefully return and take back the throne?

I’ll start by saying this: this movie is never to be judged as one of Disney’s absolute finest. It was made in the 1970s, which you probably know was a dark time for animation. In the 1960s, Walt Disney was putting his animated films on the back burner to be more of a manager; he had recently constructed Disneyland in California and the potential of another Disney park, which would become Disneyworld, in Florida. However, Uncle Walt would not live to see his Florida park’s opening; he died in 1966. This movie would be the first of a new era; it would the very first Disney animated film without Disney. He did have his say on the direction of The Jungle Book and what he had to do with The Aristocats may have been minimal, but… it was there. This movie was the very first Disney animated film that Walt himself had nothing to do with.

On its original release, it wasn’t all that successful. During the 80s though, it turned into a cult film, and nowadays people start to look at it as the origin of the furry movement; later movies would go and incorporate anthropomorphized animals without any humans at all. We did have movies that had animal sidekicks for sure, but a movie like this had seemingly started the idea of what if we weren’t humans but furry animals that walk on two legs and wear clothes? For reasons I will get into, we did need a movie like this.

I did remember watching this movie back when I was just a small child and I did enjoy it, but now thanks to a request, I will go and give my honest thoughts on it.

You probably already know the story of Robin Hood. It’s a story where the law is corrupt and the hero is a criminal. Not a story that leads to many great role models, but it does retain an appeal as it gives people an outlet for “I may not agree with the law but if I was to do something illegal I would be in some serious trouble”.

The movie does have a rather lax tone, as you know this is all meant to be taken with good humor. It has the gentle appeal of how you might be feeling if suppose you knew you were on a day when you had to work, but you did overtime last week voluntarily because you would be short one day this week; as a result you just got to stay home and rest.

This is not to say the story is perfect; it goes through a bunch of tangents involving the movie’s rather gigantic cast of characters. There’s the main story about Robin Hood and Little John robbing from the rich to give to the poor, the small town drama of life in England, the antics of some child bunnies and a glasses-wearing turtle, the romance subplot between Robin Hood and Maid Marian, the in-jest cruelty of Prince John, Sir Hiss and the Sheriff of Nottingham, etc. It seems to juggle a lot without a lot of depth or realization, and the songs are forgettable and a lot of the movie’s jokes are rather lowbrow, but the story does its job acceptably well.

I suppose I need to say something about the animation as it’s unavoidable. This movie was a budget film; they needed to cut costs and recycle some of their previous animations from older movies. It uses a rough pencil-sketch outline look that may have worked in the past with their earlier movies but there’s not a legitimate reason why they needed to use it here other than… it was just a trend they were following? There’s even times when it feels like you’ve seen animation on characters that for reasons I will explain, it is hard to not notice? An example of which is the sequence where Maid Marian is dancing with the Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, it looks very much like they rotoscoped over a similar sequence used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

With the movie’s characters, there is an awful lot. Oddly enough, though he’s supposed to be the star of the film, Robin Hood feels like a secondary character. The movie doesn’t really go very far with his characterization probably because you likely already know his story and they don’t dig any deeper than he’s now supposed to be a fox. Maid Marian is his classic love interest, suitably spirited and does hold her own level of appeal. However, she does end up being lost in the climax, though thankfully does get her man in the end. I don’t get though, that in the classic story, King Richard and Prince John are supposed to be brothers, and Marian is their cousin. In this movie, Richard and John are supposed to be a pair of lions, and Marian is a vixen. Just how exactly can she be related to them? I guess if there was ever a “don’t try to overanalyze it”, this would be it; it’s not like kids actually know how babies are made. Plus how many Disney Princesses are have the distinction of using a Wanted poster as a pin-up? Little John is supposed to Robin’s better half in a way, but while still lovable, there’s a glaring issue that is impossible to avoid: he’s a budget character if we ever saw one. The guy is literally just Baloo all over again, voice actor and all. It’s almost like the characters in Disney’s catalog can be “actors” just guised up in some way. The same can be said for Lady Kluck, Maid Marian’s lady-in-waiting. She is supposed to be a mother-like figure with some hard edges to her, though for some reason I couldn’t help but think of Merryweather with feathers and a beak. Friar Tuck is supposed be the man of good faith who isn't always consistent, some of his dialogue falls into Narm territory. Other crucial characters include Skippy the bunny and his sisters, imaginatively named Sis and Tagalong, because one is his sister and the other is a tagalong kid, get it? Along with Toby, their pal who’s a turtle; they seem like their purpose is to be cute. For the villains, Sir Hiss is a reasonably entertaining villainous sidekick though many times reminiscent of Kaa, though the Sheriff of Nottingham is pretty forgettable. Though he may take a lot of crap, the movie’s best realized character is Prince John. He is supposed to be an antagonist with a lot of “mommy issues” as he can be viewed as a wannabe king who does want everything his way, much like a spoiled brat. He would, under normal circumstances, be seen as a weak villain, but he’s funny enough to be entertaining for mature viewers; still malicious enough for you to not want him to win. The characters are a very mixed bag, but that’s probably to be expected with such a large cast.

Despite these flaws, I will say… a movie like this was one that was needed. Some people blame it for starting the furry movement, something I have no problem with, but to that matter we need movies with an anthropomorphized animal cast. The reason I bring this up is for one, furries are less likely to be judged, plus while we have movies with animals and movies about humans, we need anthropomorphized animal characters because they lend some variety to animated films. We could just make animated movies where the characters are all humans and nothing but humans, but the problem with that idea is eventually, they would all become indistinguishable from each other. Anthropomorphized animals are easier to single out and hold the appeal as being unique. You can only make so many space operas or sports movies with humans, but everyone will remember a movie where you have a fox that flies a plane or a hedgehog that runs at supersonic speeds. This is why we need movies where we have civilized animal characters.

Robin Hood is hardly a masterpiece and it’s never to be seen as Disney’s finest. However, it has an easy going charm to it that you will likely hold a place for, just take it for what it is. Indeed, Disney director Byron Howard even said he loved this movie growing up and said it was a major influence on Zootopia; it wouldn’t have surprised me if Robin Hood’s character rubbed off on Nick Wilde.

Side note is, when I was waiting for an interview for an internship on the Disney College Program, one of the Disney cast members asked which Disney animated features have an all-animal cast, my answers were Bambi, The Lion King, and this movie, which was the stumper. It was correct, and she said she also would have accepted A Bug’s Life.



Robin Hood (1973)
TreyVore rates it: C+

Not going to lie, it looks like that may be one of the best examples of a movie about a preschool show since Sesame Street: Follow that Bird.

That is a big one.

RIP Charlie Watts.