The Black Cauldron comes right out looking like the darkest story Disney has released at not only the time but even to this day. It's the story of a Dark King attempting to find the Black Cauldron in order to raise an army of the dead to destroy the land. Tasked with protecting a creature capable of a level of Clairvoyance, Taran is forced to face dark forces far beyond his abilities.
I want to start off this review by saying this is the most visually stunning thing Disney has released up to this point in its history. The atmosphere is constantly dark and foreboding, you never feel at ease. Seeing the dead rise is wonderfully surreal and otherworldly, and the Horned King Himself is a wonderful design. There is not a point in the movie where the art design is anything other than fantastic and really stands out when compared to other Disney Films.
Now on to the bad, which is just about everything else in this movie. For starters, the clairvoyant creature is a pig. The thing that moves this dark, heavy themed story forward is a stupid little pig. And the forces of The Horned King are kind of dumb. Not that the heroes are smart at all, just constantly lucky. They only ever move forward because luck is on their side and never because any of them do anything clever. For all their attempts to create a dark atmosphere, they are constantly undercutting it with bad comedy relief and narrative moments that feel more at home in a light-hearted adventure romp.
Even the one great voice actor playing the Horned King is ruined by the terrible script. It doesn't matter how great an actor he is, he cannot make some of these lines work or overcome how stupid many of his actions are. Every other actor not only has a bad script to work with, but sound incredibly flat. No one seems invested in these roles, and it does all the more to kill the show.
What I think may even be worse is that almost every character could be written out without any effort. The only characters you really need are the hero, the princess, the pig, the witches watching the Cauldron, and the villain. Everyone else is just padding. And not interesting padding, they are mostly there for the bad comedy.
This had the potential to be an all-time great animated film. You just don't see animated films from back in the day that got this dark, the only exception I can think of being Secret of Nihm (Which is amazing). But they just didn't seem to be able to commit to it. The wonderful art direction goes to waste here, and while I say it's worth seeing for that alone there really isn't anything else good to say about this one.
