Oh, incidentally, I’m Alan-A-Dale, a minstrel. That’s an old time folk singer. My job is to tell it like it is, or was, or whatever.
On this site, I spend a lot of time discussing film craft and narrative theory, explaining the mechanics of what makes a good movie. A years ago, I even wrote a little series outlining the three most important aspects of (including this one on cinematography) and how they should be managed for maximum effect. But sometimes, occasionally, I’m forced to throw out all those strategies—anything objective I expected—and recognize a movie that has nothing despite offering everything.
Disney’s Robin Hood (1973) is a famously flawed movie. Its 52% on RottenTomatoes is a quick reminder of that, as well as its release year if you’re at all familiar with Disney’s history. Yet despite its numerous shortcomings, it is a fondly remembered classic, even for those who weren’t children during the time of its release. Somehow, even with poor pacing, cheap animation, and seemingly no plot to speak of, it manages to be one of the most enchanting movies in the Disney canon.
To fully fathom the weight stacked against Robin Hood, we need to start with a bit of history. Ignoring the wartime era, Disney had been a powerhouse of animation and children’s entertainment since its unveiling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Its dominance extended through 1967 and the release of Jungle Book, the last movie Walt Disney was involved in before his death. This span is often labeled as the Gold and Silver ages of Disney animation.
However, after Walt’s death, the company struggled for the next two decades, producing such duds as The Rescuers (1977) and The Black Cauldron (1985). It wasn’t until the 1989 release of The Little Mermaid that the studio regained its footing and my peers and I were welcomed by the “Disney Renaissance.” Though they’ve certainly stumbled at times since, their prospects haven’t looked quite as grave as they did between 1970 and 1988.
Walt Disney was, if anything, an innovator, and the world was right to worry after his death if the studio would survive. The first film produced after his passing was The Aristocats, and though passable by some measurements, for many it marked the confirmation of their suspicions. Disney Animation had lost its spark, that creativity and scale that blessed its previous endeavors. Things got bad enough over those twenty years that it was rumored the studio would have to close its doors. They had lay-offs and slashed budgets, and it shows.
The poor animation in Robin Hood is probably its most known vice. Even a novice recognizes the rougher style of the film, and a quick search on YouTube will return dozens of videos analyzing its recycled animation. For the unfamiliar, animators those days would sometimes save time and money by tracing the characters and movements of previous films. And since Robin Hood was a cheap film, this happened a lot. Not only did it borrow from earlier Disney endeavors, borrowed from the movie immediately preceding it, The Aristocats—and worse, it reused its own animation throughout.
Still the film’s poverty runs much deeper than its borrowed animation. Robin Hood films are, by nature, unexciting affairs. Since the character exists in the public domain, Hollywood likes to crank out a version about once a decade along with its cousin, King Arthur. There have certainly been worthwhile versions over the years—possibly the most iconic is Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), but masterpiece epics like this are growing increasingly infrequent.
Since Disney gave the characters the animation treatment, Robin Hood and King Arthur have been remade in various styles. In the late 80s/early 90s, we received the more realistic and romantic renditions in Prince of Thieves and Excalibur. In the 2000s, post-Gladiator era, we got the brutal, revisionist versions in Robin Hood (2010) and King Arthur (2004). Most recently, we’ve gotten our superhero takes on the characters in Robin Hood (2018) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword—both tremendous flops.
Given the failures of these recent films, it’s not unlikely that young people today are most familiar with the Robin Hood and Merry-men in Shrek or, if we’re lucky, from Disney’s 1973 movie—a movie made out of convenience and financial necessity.
Disney’s Robin Hood is a movie without narrative momentum, real style, or even character arcs; it was produced by a studio in its worst era on a tight budget with limited time and resources. Yet it is perhaps the most elegant and soulful film to come out of that studio in the thirty years before it. How?
An initial answer might be found in its music. Disney made the interesting choice of hiring Roger Miller, a mildly popular country music musician of the time, to help in the writing of the movie’s soundtrack. Compare this choice to the hiring of pop-rock sensation Elton John for the soundtrack of The Lion King or even to Billy Joel’s involvement in Oliver & Company—a movie also released in that same dark era of Disney animation.
Not only is the popularity difference of these musicians noteworthy, but also their genres. By bringing in a country musician—a folk singer—Disney sacrificed perhaps in musical aptitude and catchiness (though that “Oo-De-Lally” ear-worm I’ve had stuck in my head for the last 20 years would beg to differ) in favor of lyricism. Malcolm Gladwell, in the second season of his podcast Revisionist History, spends a whole episode—“King of Tears”—explaining the human depth inherent in country music. Though Rock’n’Roll has probably seen the most development over the decades in musical theory, country music, as a constant, has thrived on its real emotion. And Miller’s strength in just that shows in his folkish and heavy-hearted tunes.
Perhaps another strength of the cult classic is its characterization. While its protagonist is a dashing rogue, unflappable in the face of danger, like the Errol Flynn version that came before, he is also world-weary, almost melancholy. Some have described this Robin Hood’s Maid Marian as transcending the damsel stock character and bringing an Audrey Hepburn-esque elegance to the screen. And of course the movie’s villains are among the finest—not for their menace or intimidation like those that might appear later in Disney’s renaissance—but in their ability to present a real threat despite (or because of) their insecurities and fragile egos.
Beyond these virtues, though, I think Robin Hood achieves something great in its clearest breaking of any filmmaking rules. By forsaking the necessary task of giving the movie any sort of propulsion or narrative thrust, Disney’s Robin Hood is instead content to tarry in the moment. It tells its story in long chunks with soft segues between. Scene A does not push us to scene B but rather provides us a world to live in and enjoy. Robin Hood takes on an almost vignette structure with the faintest of strings connecting the action.
If any movie ever was, 1973’s Robin Hood is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a David & Goliath story, with a fairy-tale like innocence; in analogous form to the death of Walt Disney, it relives the empty throne of its king. It transcends sketched animation and a world completely dismissive of its efforts to provide its own world, beautifully colored, whimsical and meditative. It’s the only movie perfectly captured by the floating of fireflies in the evening.
