Robin Hood (1973)
★★★ — Robin Hood (1973)
The legend of Robin Hood has been retold so many times that it is practically a genre unto itself, but in 1973 Walt Disney Productions took the familiar tale in a direction nobody had quite attempted before: a fully animated version in which every character, hero and villain alike, is an animal. Robin himself is a fox, Maid Marian a vixen, Prince John a thumb-sucking lion, and the Sheriff of Nottingham a wolf with all the charm of a bailiff on a rainy Monday. The result is a film that sits in an interesting spot in the Disney canon, arriving at a period of real transition for the studio, just a couple of years after the deaths of Walt Disney himself and a number of the veteran animators who had defined the house style. The early 1970s Disney output carries a certain scrappiness alongside its warmth, and Robin Hood is perhaps the clearest example of that quality on the screen.
The film was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, a Disney stalwart who had been with the studio since the 1930s and who steered several of the animated features through this transitional era. If you have read the site's reviews of One Hundred and One Dalmatians or The Aristocats, both also directed by Reitherman, you will already have a sense of his preferred register: loose, warm, driven more by character comedy than plot mechanics. He had a genuine gift for casting voice talent, and Robin Hood is no exception. Brian Bedford, a classically trained theatre actor, gives Robin a laconic, self-assured quality that suits the character well. Phil Harris, who had become something of a Reitherman regular by this point, brings his familiar easygoing delivery to Little John. Peter Ustinov's Prince John is a comic creation of genuine invention, petulant and pompous in equal measure, and Andy Devine rounds out the ensemble as Friar Tuck with the kind of gruff affability you could listen to all afternoon. The voice performances, as a collective, give the film much of its personality.
The film's source material is the traditional English folk legend rather than any single literary adaptation, and the screenplay leans into that oral, ballad-like quality by framing the story through the narration of Alan-a-Dale, here reimagined as a rooster and voiced with relaxed country charm by Roger Miller, who also contributed the film's songs. That folk-music flavour gives Robin Hood a distinctive texture among Disney features of the period, lighter on orchestral grandeur and more interested in toe-tapping simplicity. At 83 minutes, it is not a long film by any measure, though whether it earns every one of those minutes is, as you will read below, a question worth asking.
Robin Hood (1973) is Disney at its most charmingly scrappy, a film that starts with infectious energy and a killer soundtrack, then gradually runs out of steam. Casting Robin as a sly fox (voiced with effortless cool by Brian Bedford) and his band of Merry Men as a menagerie of forest creatures was a stroke of genius, and the early scenes crackle with personality: Robin and Little John's trickster antics on the river, the archery tournament disguise, and that unforgettable opening ballad by Roger Miller ("Oo-de-lally!") set a breezy, folk-tale tone that's hard not to love. But as the film stretches toward its hour-and-a-half runtime, the seams show. The plot meanders, recycling gags and even animation sequences from earlier Disney features (The Aristocats, The Jungle Book). Prince John's tantrums grow repetitive, the Sheriff of Nottingham lacks real menace, and the third act sags under filler. It's the rare Disney film that feels long, not because it's ambitious, but because it's spinning its wheels. A pleasant, musically rich diversion that captures childhood nostalgia beautifully, but lacks the narrative tightness and emotional payoff of Disney's best. Like a half-remembered storybook: warm, whimsical, and ultimately slight.
For me, that comparison to a half-remembered storybook is exactly right, and I find it hard to shake even days after watching. There is genuine pleasure here, particularly in those early stretches where the energy is high and Miller's songs are doing their work, and I suspect anyone who grew up with this one will defend it fiercely on the basis of pure affection. That is fair enough. But affection and achievement are different things, and when I think about how much more The Hunchback of Notre Dame manages to pack into a similar runtime, or how a smaller animated film like Josep uses every single minute with purpose, the looseness here feels less like charming informality and more like a missed opportunity. A film I am glad exists, and glad I revisited. Just not one I would rush back to in a hurry.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1973 | Watched: 2026-03-21
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Robin Hood (1973) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Rakuten TV
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Wolfgang Reitherman: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) · The Aristocats (1970)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
