The output of Walt Disney Animation Studios–currently totaling 54 full-length films–has been cherished by audiences young and old for almost 80 years. In this weekly online feature, arts and entertainment editor Nathan Tucker will review and rank each of them.

Disney’s Robin Hood is not, in all honesty, a good film.  What it is, however, is a barrel of fun, which makes up for the lack of “quality” (whatever that is).

In the negative column: the animation is on-par with The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats, which is to say it is mediocre. Wolfgang Reitherman, he of the reused animation and unerased penciling lines, is back in the director’s chair, and his fingerprints are all over the film. Reitherman had reused animation from earlier Disney films before, but never to the degree he did in Robin Hood: an entire sequence is traced over scraps of other movies. The film’s plot is disjointed, ambling in and out of essential and inessential scenes. Worst of all, the ending is an absolute cheat, especially when Disney had already storyboarded a better, darker climax.

All that considered: Robin Hood is simply a good time. The character design is an ingenious match between the folktale’s characters and the animal kingdom. The cast is well-suited to the material: Peter Ustinov’s Prince John is gleefully unhinged and Brian Bedford’s Robin has just the right amount of gravitas for a cartoon fox. Moreover, the dialogue is quotable (be prepared to suppress urges to exclaim “Oo-de-llally!” after viewing) and the unusual choice to enlist country-and-western singer Roger Miller as musical narrator pays off immensely.

Robin Hood is as much of an underrated cult classic as any Disney film could be. Notably flawed and scrappy, it outweighs those disadvantages with a sense of pure fun. Still the best version of Robin Hood since Errol Flynn, this film may not be a perfect shot–but it nevertheless hits the mark.

The List:

1. Bambi
2. Sleeping Beauty
3. Lady and the Tramp
4. The Jungle Book
5. Alice in Wonderland
6. Fantasia
7. Pinocchio
8. Robin Hood
9. One Hundred and One Dalmatians
10. Peter Pan
11. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
12. Cinderella
13. Dumbo
14. The Aristocats
15. The Sword in the Stone
16. Melody Time
17. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
18. Fun and Fancy Free
19. Saludos Amigos
20. Make Mine Music
21. The Three Caballeros