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.

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.

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]

A fun-but-uninspired swords-and-sorcery story.

Despite its drawbacks as entertainment, it remains one of the best technical cartoon features ever produced by Disney.

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.

Technically brilliant though short on narrative, The Black Cauldron is a painless, old-fashioned way to take out the kids, and a triumph for the animation department at the Disney studio, where it has been in development for almost a dozen years.

The essential problem with The Black Cauldron is that the central human character in the story is a complete drip, making it difficult to root for his success at saving the world from ruination.

If you care about animation as an art form, it is impossible not to be thrilled by Disney's "The Black Cauldron." [27 July 1985, p.1]

This is the 25th full-length animated feature from Walt Disney studios, and professionally put together as it is, many of the ingredients may seem programmed to those who have seen some of the others.