Runtime: 80 minutes
Directed by: Ted Berman and the hilariously named Richard Rich... or as I like to call him, Richie Rich
Starring: A decent voice cast
From: Disney
Are oracular pigs a Welsh tradition?
The Black Cauldron is arguably the first cult Walt Disney animated feature film; it was darker than the rest. After Uncle Walt passed away in the mid 60's, they tried all sorts of things and seemed like a rudderless ship at times, whether animation or live action. As I recently mentioned, some of their live action work from the time was a mystery to me until I saw it in the listing of Disney + movies. Good thing Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg came in and enacted some changes, even if it wasn't always done with tact or grace. While it has fallen off in the past 25 years, at least there was a great run from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King.
The production of this was a LONG process and almost sank the entire animated division when it flopped. It caused both Don Bluth and Tim Burton to leave, to entirely different careers. The fact that 12 minutes were suddenly excised after a disaster of a test screening and they tried to patch the holes (which were noticeable to the point that more than once, the soundtrack skips) did not help matters. That being declared, while some character moments were for some reason cut out also when it wasn't the “too scary” moments that frightened Disney, I don't know if that would have helped make the protagonists seem like an effective team instead of a group of people & creatures that did not do too much of note without having such things as a literal magic sword save their asses.
Presumably those issues weren't in Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, the series of books this movie was based on; those were five books that incorporated various Welsh mythologies. I was glad to see different legends being used instead of ones that seem overtly familiar due to how many times they were used in the past. A pig that is an oracle and can form images from looking in a pool of liquid... weird yet I can roll with it. The story is at its most basic a typical dark adventure: the title object holds the power to raise the undead so the villain The Horned King would of course love to find it. A wacky group of characters-led by the teenaged boy that raises the ocular pig-have to find it first and destroy the container.
As I mentioned, the heroes would have been better off if they would have done more on their own and looked formidable against a villain that looked badass... sure, King was in essence a version of Skeletor but he was voiced by John Hurt; if only King did more than order his minions around. The animation often looked gorgeous-there was also some CG used, which was a first-and I really enjoyed the Elmer Bernstein score; that was a huge asset in establishing the fantasy mood. That along with some supporting characters helped make this fine for me. Note that this does NOT include the bipedal dog creature known as Gurgi. Instead, that was The Horned King's lackey Creeper, the trio of witches and the grumpy old sprite known as Doli. Scrolling through the reviews here, most view Gurgi as an equal to Jar Jar in terms of character love. At first it was incredibly irksome; after awhile Gurgi became more tolerable and honestly, such things as a climax which was more like “what climax?” are a bigger issue.
All the carping I did here, the rating is still satisfactory due to its positives. Not to always bemoan how they don't make movies like they used to in corporate Hollywood, but look at Disney now. They are a giant conglomerate which in recent times either create live-action versions of cartoon classics that have massive issues yet make beaucoup bucks, MCU pictures that usually are incredibly safe, or Star Wars movies that either fail due to the “too many cooks” philosophy or when they try to be different, they create The Last Jedi. Many film fans love it (for some reason)... I certainly don't and most importantly, many Star Wars fans didn't like it or the character assassination that occurred. Point is, even if I wish Disney did not interfere with The Black Cauldron, at least they tried a more mature cartoon AND stuck with such Welsh names as Eilonwy, Eidlleg and Ffewddur Fflam... not always easy to say and certainly hard to spell. Some Welsh town names I have no idea how to pronounce, to be honest. No offense to anyone from Wales. I mean, apparently microwaves are known as popty ping and that isn't the only language which has incredibly long place names like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Even though the lead Taran is a whiny millennial (to paraphrase someone here), at least it looked and sounded real good, some sloppy animated moments aside. Perhaps this should actually receive some sort of remake, no matter its medium. As is, an interesting failure I am glad was finally viewed.
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