Stream it now Bedknobs and Broomsticks 1971

 

THIS IS VERY GOOD.ANGELA WILL ALSO BE KNOWN AS THE VOICE OF MISS POTS FROM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.ALSO FOR HER PART IN MURDER SHE WROTE.

I used to watch this with my sister so much when I was younger, we both loved it!

*** (out of four)

This was the Disney studios attempt at copying the successful formula it had used with "Mary Poppins". While not nearly as good or successful as the prior film was, this is still decent entertainment with plenty to recommend.

The great Angela Lansbury is a witch who takes the three children living with her on one adventure after the other as they ride atop a brass bed from place to place. There are some wonderful animated sections mixed in with the live action.

I think the best thing about the film is the special effects. I especially enjoyed the humorous finale of the moving knights and shiny armor keeping the Germans away. They seem indestructible.

Although slow at times this Disney classic is wonderful. It gives you music that is catchy, scenes that are classic, and magic that is innocent.

Angela Lansbury is superb as the lead, but although the acting skills from the children is questionable, plenty of subtle jokes and a great sense of Story Telling make Bedknobs and Broomsticks a great classic.

A great classic Disney movie. The cheerful songs and interesting scenes make this a lot of fun. From bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea to casting the spell of substitutiary locomotion... this movie is a great one for the whole family. While some of the effects may be very 1970s, the movie can still be enjoyed as a flashback to a bygone era for the adults, and the kids won't notice that the effects aren't from 2009.

Although Bedknobs and Broomsticks is far from being Disney's best feature and I know the studio can make better stuff, the film is entertaining, Angela Lansbury is an incredible actress that also sings beautifully, but the screenplay and the direction is mostly weak except for the ending when the ancient army takes life and pursues the nazies, that moment was really funny and was good enough to say the film is fresh.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

This movie along with Pete's Dragon were some of the better early Disney live action/animation hybrids. It does get cheesy at times but I see it as more of a kids movie or family movie. Overall it's still a fun nostalgic movie to watch.

The book, as I recall, is called Bedknob and Broomsticks, or possibly Bedknobs and Broomstick, or maybe even Bedknob and Broomstick. There's at least one singular in there, and I am never able to remember where. (Yes, I could look it up for the purposes of this review, but that would rather miss the point.) I've never read it, though I'm pretty sure Elaine owned a copy when we were children.

At any rate, I believe it was one of the properties Disney bought the rights to while he was arguing with P. L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, over the rights to her book, which she would have been greatly annoyed to hear referred to as a property in the first place. Indeed, the "Beautiful Briny Sea" sequence was originally intended for placement in Mary Poppins, which leads to the strong presumption that it isn't in either book.

The movie requires historical setup these days, though it's based on a similar principle to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in one aspect at least. Children from London are evacuated and sent to the country to get away from the bombing. This is true; this happened. However, in the book version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, there's a slight implication that the children's parents know the Professor already; Carrie, Paul, and Charlie Rawlins have no parents and no connection to Miss Eglantine Price.

It would be unthinkable today to send children into the home of a random stranger, but it really did happen in London of the day. It was generally, I think, considered that nothing that could happen to a child was worse than getting killed by a bomb. Personally, I don't think that's true; the child could be molested and tortured then killed. I have no figures on how many children of the evacuation were mistreated by their host families, however.

At any rate, in this case, the worst thing about Miss Price is that she's a witch. A good witch, too. Also, she doesn't like children. However, as is frequently the case in movies, a person who doesn't like children as a classification comes to love a small group of children in particular. Indeed, as we all know it will, the opportunity to send the children to another home comes, and as we all know she will, Miss Price chooses not to take it. She and the children--and Professor Brown--are too busy having wacky hijinks for that.

This is a cute movie, if not a good one, and an opportunity to see Angela Lansbury when you could still imagine someone finding her lovely. (Striking, by that point in her life. But Professor Brown finds her lovely.) The "Portobello Road" musical sequence is one of my favourites in all Disney. And to those who find it improbable, do remember that every culture represented was at the time part of the British Empire and would have been in London at the time for the war effort.