Overrated

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Need to say, the only good thing about The Black Cauldron it's good quality of backgrounds animation, a quality that was not seen in the Disney studio since "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). But honestly, I don't care if this film has become "cult". Remains as bad as ever.First, Taran is the most forgetabble protagonist in Disney history. Unlike other friendly boys as Mowgli (1967) or Arthur (1963), Taran is boring and has no charisma. All other characters also suffer from the same problem. The villain looks like a character who was taken from some cheap episode of Scooby-Doo. Fairies / gnomes (or what the hell are those things) sound like dull rip-offs of the Seven Dwarfs. Gurgi was created to be friendly and for we to care with him, but he's just an animated version of Jar Jar Binks we wish to see dead.As if things were not already worse enough, the script of this film is problematic. In the beginning, we have a nut with "magical" powers (in my opinion the only sympathetic character in the movie), which seems to be the essential key to the climax of the film, but in half the movie to the end, she simply leaves to follow Taran and disappear in history. In my view, a serious flaw script. Add to the fact that history doesn't have any memorable moment, and we realized the disaster that The Black Cauldron is.

The Black Cauldron is given a bad name by even Disney itself for nearly destroying their animation studio (it was a major flop at the box office, comparable to their films in the 1940s) and for being a departure from the typical Disney format of either musical or just light-hearted joy (for the most part), but the truth is, it only recently got the warm cult reception it deserved back in 1985. Despite having some dull moments, the acting is top notch (especially John Hurt's Horned King), the horror scares, and there is enough action (including a shockingly crude joke that left my mouth wide open) to enjoy it as much as Lloyd Alexander's series. In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes it has a higher rating than Robin Hood or a few of Disney's early-mid 2000s films (55%), which I guess can be agreed with seeing how many critics didn't appreciate the new format, though its execution is not something to be glossed over. See it for yourself; I enjoyed it, but I can't guarantee, especially if you like older Disney films, that your rating will be just as or more favorable.

Now there are Disney fans who have grown up with this Disney film and this is 4 years before the start of the Disney renaissance era. Now this film is based on an old fairy tale book and it tells about this Black Cauldron which has the power to raise the dead and enslave the world. The only one who could use that kind of power was the Horned King. One boy, a princess and a little dog like creature were all that stood in his way. When the power of the Black Cauldron is reversed, the Horned King gets sucked into it along with his army of the dead. Then the boy, the princess and Gurgi lived happily ever after. Now one fact about this is that this is the first animated Disney film without any songs. Now this is an OK Disney film but the animation in this isn't all that great. I choose Frozen and the Lion King over this.

I am currently reading The Chronicles of Prydain and thinking that it would be good to see the movie as I read, I picked up this movie.What A SHOCK!!!! All of the other main characters with the exception of Hen Wen, Taran, Princess Eilonwy, Girgy and F. Flam are missing and this movie starts off with Taran's mentor as a bumbling fool, as a opposed to a serious scholar and goes downhill from there.It goes on with tons of added ridiculous characters, scenes and characterizations of some of the people in the book.Overall, it wanders so far away from the book and with so many laughable, non-existent occurrences it becomes unwatchable as you watch in horror this train wreck of a movie! Don't bother with this mess, listen to the unabridged recordings from Listening Library and embrace this CLASSIC series of novels!