| Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: July 24, 1985 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
8
Mixed:
7
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
The new boys know how to create wonderful transformations in a character's expression with a deft stroke or two, and they have mastered the deliciously parodistic plasticity required by the movements of their ever twisting-turning-tumbling creatures. Their pastoral scenes still glow with the old Disney sweetness, and the ones of foreboding glower with the old relish for the grotesque. They satisfy an older viewer's nostalgic feeling for his childhood's delight while fulfilling the younger crowd's need for a kind of magic the movies too rarely even try to provide of late. It is never too early to learn that animation is still the best special effect.
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A noble project, directed by Disney veterans and performed by superb actors like John Hurt and Freddie Jones. It is a carefully wrought and thoroughly enjoyable film based on the "Chronicles of Prydain" by Lloyd Alexander, the American Tolkien. [26 July 1985, p.23]
But there's still a great deal to love in The Black Cauldron. The untested animators Don Bluth left behind created some amazing sequences, including a dramatic scene of Taran's oracular pig, Hen Wen, being captured by pterodactyl-like gwythaints...For all its flaws, The Black Cauldron was a movie ahead of its time.
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It's quite good, though by the impossible standards the film sets for itself it inevitably falls short: the character design is a little smudgy, the backgrounds are somewhat unimaginative, and the secret of Disney animation's unique depth—its impeccable perspectives and shadings—seems to have been irretrievably lost.
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