Robin Hood

Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 2.0

Innocuous, hastily animated cartoon adaptation of the Robin Hood narrative by Disney, which turns the human participants of the story into various creatures: Robin and Maid Marion are foxes, Prince John is a lion, Friar Tuck is a badger and so forth. The original tale's emphasis on 'stealing from the rich and giving to the poor' is given the soft sell - because this for kids, remember - and it turns Prince John into a thumb-sucking wuss, while the real nasty work is done by the Sheriff of Nottingham (voiced by Pat Buttram), who thinks nothing of taking from the blind, poor church mice, etc.: the real embodiment of psychopathic capitalism. A product of the 70's, this plays along with the counterculture of the time, but in the end only children will be amused by any of it.