The Black Cauldron (1985)

(A magical land whose name I forget; medieval-like times)

This was the first movie I specifically remember going to see in a theater, I was five years old. As I hadn't seen the film since my initial encounter with it 22 years ago, it's essentially new to me and hence the review. This is a kind of poor man's, Junior version of 'Lord of the Rings' with an evil kettle standing in for the "One ring to rule them all". It's an exceptionally bellow-par work for Disney, but I still kind of like it owing largely to the important and sentimental place in occupies in my film experience. I had a mission companion who as a child was big fan of the books this movie was based on, he hated on the film feeling it butchered the source material, greatly condensing things into a measly eighty minutes. One thing I did notice was that the animators really seemed to be mining past Disney iconography for this thing, there were characters and sequences which seemed to draw heavily on design concepts from 'The Sword in the Stone', 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Peter Pan', 'Pinocchio', and 'Fantasia'. All in all a curious little flash back for me, I'm surprised how much I remembered.