i have a very strong bias towards beautiful 2D animation. if a movie's got gorgeous animation, i can forgive it for so much. i'll readily admit that i probably wouldn't care about this movie if it wasn't animated! but it is animated. and it's very pretty. and i do care about it. it's very nice.

the sword in the stone is nothing deep. it's a fun little family flick where fun magic happens and then arthur becomes king. (spoiler alert. but you already know that!) there's no particularly deep narrative, no hidden themes or intricate plotting. the sword and the stone is just fun. it's only trying to be fun, and i respect it for that. the hand-drawn animation is beautiful, the scenes where wart/arthur and merlin get up to different animal shenanigans are fun, and i am fond of the 'battle of wits' scene near the end of the movie. what more do you want me to say? it's cute and i liked it. or, well -- okay. it's a litle weird that arthur very clearly has two different voice actors. he kept switching between a prepubescent child's voice and a voice-cracking teenager's, sometimes in the middle of one scene, and it threw me off. everything else is fun though. cute animation, cute little songs.

nothing crazy, just cute and fun. probably nice to have on in the background during homework. maybe i'll watch it again in a few months.