Disney Disney Disney

[Ernest Rister]

Robin Hood using Jungle Book animation

Jungle Book, Goliath II, Snow White, The Aristocats, a Goofy "Football" short, the list goes on and on. Milt flipped out during production (which isn't a real surprise, since he was a smoldering volcano on a good day, allegedly) and stormed down the hallway screaming, "You're all garbagemen!"

You take the recycled animation and THEN include the weakest story structure of any Disney movie (there is no ending, a rooster steps out from behind a tree and says, "You know, I thought we'd never get rid of those two rascals, but lucky for us, King Richard returned, and well, he just straightened everything out."), you've got the worst of the Walt-crew-9-old-men films. The characters are charming, the music is wonderful, but the script is *terrible*. The Disney Channel once aired a snip of a deleted sequence of King Richard's return. I've seen it, damn it, a really pissd-off lion resembling what they used in Bedknobs, coming out of a tunnel while Nutsy and Trigger were demanding "Who Goes There?" or some such. They made the call that actually resolving the story on screen was too boring, so they cut it, and so Robin Hood really has no ending. A rooster just tells us in a sentence everything worked out, and hey! Let's get to the wedding! Pay no attention to the lack of story structure behind the curtain! Walt was upset by Sword in the Stone, and I think he would have had a negative reaction to Robin Hood. The fact that the characters and music are so charming blinds people to how poor the story is, meanwhile, the recycled animation demonstrates the shockingly low budget given to the animation team, but most people don't recognize that either. Robin Hood is pretty awful, folks.

A bunch of village children accidentally shoot an arrow into the castle courtyard of Prince John, where Maid Marion and Lady Cluck are playing badminton. The children sneak in to retrieve the arrow, and are discovered by Maid Marion and Lady Cluck. After Marion and Cluck reassure the children, Skippy the Rabbit pretends to be Robin Hood and grabs Marion's hand and pretends to escape into the garden.

MAID MARION
Oh! So this is Sherwood Forest.

SKIPPY THE RABBIT
Yeah, I guess so. So now what do we do?

MAID MARION
What does this scene have to do with the rest of the movie?

SKIPPY THE RABBIT
Beats the shit out of me.