Despite its status as one of Disney’s lesser animated classics their 1973 take on the Robin Hood legend had always been a childhood favourite. Yet even though it had been a good few years since my last visit to Sherwood forest it was amazing how fresh in the memory this film remained and how well it still holds up now viewing it through more cynical eyes.

Wolfgang Reitherman’s Robin Hood seems best known for its cheap production values rather than its exciting adventure, catchy tunes and memorable characters. Whilst it may famously recycle animation from the studio’s earlier movies (Reitherman’s own The Jungle Book being repurposed several times) as well as repeat sequences to save money it rarely impacts on…

A few thoughts on this bad boy:

1- Making this a low-stakes, episodic Western is a move that makes close to no sense on paper, but ultimately works really well. It's a strong argument for the Disney style of reworking movies long into the animation process.

2- This was originally the story of Reynard the Fox, but Disney scrapped that movie because he thought Reyard was inappropriate or something. That's why everybody in this is an animal. Of course, history tells us that this movie became patient zero for furries, I've decided. We can never know the outcome of our actions. Disney was worried Reynard the fox was inappropriate and in doing so he created a generation of furries he…

Disney's twenty-first feature hits several of the same notes as the two that preceded it, with lots of the same stock characters, voice talent, and famously, even some of the same animations. Fortunately, it's a fun story with some really solid artwork to it, so even if you are watching Phil Harris as a carefree animal who talks in lots of hipster jazz slang for like, the third film in a row, I think it's still worth seeing and probably a little better than The Aristocats, as much as I do like that one. There were a couple of new faces among the well-established Disney roster of voice talent this time around - Roger Miller is fun as the singing,…

Some funny and cozy sequences, but it's too slight and simple to be worth its runtime. There's too much animation, not enough actually happening.

Second acts are the real problem of early Disney. They're repetitive and dull, and nothing really changes or turns in them; there are a few songs, usually some traveling or an action/comedy set-piece, but it's all exposition. It doesn't challenge its characters, it's content to just show what it's like to live in this world. So the quality of the films all comes down to how clever, inventive or fun these second act filler segments are, how good the songs are, or how invested you are in the characters. And most times the characters are very…