Outlaws.

I'm really enjoying the Disney Robin Hood at the moment. I particularly like the analogy they're drawing between the civil rights movement of that era and the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages.

There are some real gems in there. I especially love the set-up from the narrator, a cockerel based on Alan-a-Dale: 'Oh, incidentally, I'm Alan-A-Dale, a minstrel. That's an early day folk singer. My job is to tell it like it is, or was, or whatever.'

It's got that lovely once-upon-a-time tone that you hear in the Disney Peter Pan, another film of which the kids have been forcing me to endure repeated viewings: 'All of this has happened before, and it will happen again. But this time it happened in London.'

The rest of the film shines mostly because of Peter Ustinov's incredible performance as Prince John. His cowardly, thumb-sucking tiger has fixed the image of the villainous, rapacious usurper John Lackland in the public imagination as securely as Shakespeare's Richard III. 

A few of his gems, from memory, are:

'Permit me an evil chuckle.' (regarding a dastardly scheme)

'You eel in snake's clothing.' (of his sneaky adviser, Hiss)

'Seize the fat one.' (of Maid Marian's nursemaid, Clucky)

Of course, it's possible Ustinov didn't write those lines himself (I get the impression that the Disney studios were having a bit of a golden age around this time – then again the roughly contemporaneous Sword in the Stone is a travesty). But then again, maybe he did.

Watching his Prince John always makes me think of the response Ustinov gave when asked how it felt to be the funniest man in England. He said: 'I'm not. He is now called Peter Cook.'

Like Cook, the guy was modest AND a genius. It's totally sickening, but also totally badass. A bit like Robin Hood. 

Comments

[Simon Phipps]

'Permit me an evil chuckle'!