Sometimes you gotta do the obvious thing. I mean everybody loved animated Disney animals, the titular legend, and the latter lent itself extremely well to the tone that was mastered by the former. There's countless stories that you couldn't do this with. It almost works as a spiritual successor (which pretty much everyone wanted. A sequel would make less sense. Live action remake just barely did) to the Jungle Book. Little John is Baloo. Hiss is Kaa, he's even still hypnotising people all the time. The prince is like a weak cowardly cousin of Shere Khan. They also bring in the crocodile and others from Fantasia. In general they did an amazing job picking the exact right species for the different characters beloved and hated alike.
50 years later this remains the favorite version of the story for many and not even only those who grew up on it. It's one of the last times that Hollywood was willing to embrace the classic swashbuckling style of adventure. Starting with the 90s Kevin Costner version, onwards they were insistent on apologizing for it and making it modern imitating other movies of the time which proved especially fatal for the 2018 one. This features all the things we read about in picture books as seven-year-olds about Mr. Hood: disguises and other subterfuge even infiltrations, the archery tournament with some truly amazing shooting, and romance. It never gets old seeing the outlaws lift the ill-gotten goods of John the worst. It is surpassed only by the 1938 version.
This delivers everything we expect from the studios efforts of this sort at the time. Funny, cute, impossibly charming, tense, exciting, a lot happens despite a fairly short running time for a feature length release, every living thing moves exactly right unless that's the gag. It immediately addresses the obvious issue; children are meant to agree with Robin despite what he's doing being something they're not supposed to emulate. It is something that in-universe is acknowledged as being against the law and then it shows why it's necessary. We see the misery the Sheriff causes with the excessive taxation. He literally takes the one coin that a child gets as a birthday present, that the family saved up for! They don't call it cartoon villainy for nothing. Maid Marian and lady Kluck are good in part because they play with kids they don't even know just to make their day. The lead himself would love to marry the foxy lady but is worried he's not good enough for her rather than just assuming. 8/10.
50 years later this remains the favorite version of the story for many and not even only those who grew up on it. It's one of the last times that Hollywood was willing to embrace the classic swashbuckling style of adventure. Starting with the 90s Kevin Costner version, onwards they were insistent on apologizing for it and making it modern imitating other movies of the time which proved especially fatal for the 2018 one. This features all the things we read about in picture books as seven-year-olds about Mr. Hood: disguises and other subterfuge even infiltrations, the archery tournament with some truly amazing shooting, and romance. It never gets old seeing the outlaws lift the ill-gotten goods of John the worst. It is surpassed only by the 1938 version.
This delivers everything we expect from the studios efforts of this sort at the time. Funny, cute, impossibly charming, tense, exciting, a lot happens despite a fairly short running time for a feature length release, every living thing moves exactly right unless that's the gag. It immediately addresses the obvious issue; children are meant to agree with Robin despite what he's doing being something they're not supposed to emulate. It is something that in-universe is acknowledged as being against the law and then it shows why it's necessary. We see the misery the Sheriff causes with the excessive taxation. He literally takes the one coin that a child gets as a birthday present, that the family saved up for! They don't call it cartoon villainy for nothing. Maid Marian and lady Kluck are good in part because they play with kids they don't even know just to make their day. The lead himself would love to marry the foxy lady but is worried he's not good enough for her rather than just assuming. 8/10.