The next scene is at Prince John’s palace. The scene begins with Hiss writing in books; it is assumed he is Prince John’s bookkeeper. The Sheriff walks in, singing the song that the Nottingham citizens where singing at Robin’s hideout, and teaches it to Hiss. But while Hiss sings it back, Prince John enters, thus ending the song. Prince John orders that, because of the people’s insolence, the taxes would be doubled—no, tripled. This scene lasts for just a few minutes, and is arranged in a stage-play fashion.
The following scene begins a few weeks later, in the jail of Prince John’s castle. The rooster narrator is in there, chained up, explaining that anybody who couldn’t pay their taxes were in there with him. At a glance, it looks as if everyone in Nottingham is in there.
Except Friar Tuck, that is. He is at his church, ringing the bell; it is Sunday. When the mouse organist says that nobody will come, Friar Tuck says that no, they won’t, but maybe the bell will give them hope. The organist’s wife is sweeping their doorway—which is, of course, a hole in the wall—and asks how there could be any hope when Prince John taxed the heart and soul out of the poor people. Friar Tuck slowly agrees, stating that the church is like the box he keeps to help the poor: empty.
The mouse goes into her house, and picks up her bed, underneath which is a farthing. She picks it up and gives it to Friar Tuck. The badger exclaims, “Your last farthing? Oh, nobody could give more than that. Bless you, little sister.”
This is obviously a parallel to a Bible story—a first and only example in the history of Disney animation. In the book of Matthew, Jesus went to the temple and saw a widow put two small coins into a box—not even worth a penny in today’s money. But Jesus knew that these coins were all the widow had left, and said that she had given all she had, and in doing so gave more than anybody else in the temple.
However, that particular story in the Bible didn’t have a sequel chapter; unfortunately, Robin Hood does. The Sheriff of Nottingham walks in at that very moment, hushing the organ, and picking the farthing out of the box.
“But that’s the poor box!” Friar Tuck exclaims. “Yes, and I must take it to poor Prince John,” the Sheriff replies. This sets Friar Tuck off; he has had it with the Sheriff and the prince and everybody like them. The Sheriff warns him that, if he keeps up that kind of talk, he will eventually preach himself into a hanging noose. In a country well known for killing preachers like Friar Tuck, this is no idle threat.
Friar Tuck pushes the Sheriff outside, and starts attacking him with his walking stick. But this is no match for the Sheriff’s sword, and the wolf easily bests him. He places Friar Tuck under arrest, taking in away. As the narrator says in the background, “Every town has its ups and downs. Sometimes ups outnumber the downs. But not in Nottingham.”In Prince John’s castle later that evening, Prince John, still angry that Robin Hood escaped his grasp, sits still while Hiss lists off the number of things that are going on in England. Then, after Hiss saying that Friar Tuck has been placed under arrest, Prince John snaps out of his idleness and starts rampaging around his room. “It’s Robin Hood I want!” Then an idea crosses his mind: he will order Friar Tuck to be hanged—even Hiss jumps at this idea—and when the badger marches off to the gallows the next morning, Robin Hood would surely come to rescue him, but when he does, he’ll be hanged instead.
But, that night, while the Sheriff and his two vulture friends—Trigger and Nutsy, he calls them—prepare the scaffold for the next morning, Robin Hood in his beggar costume wanders inside and asks what the scaffold is for. When it is replied by Nutsy—who is obviously true to his name—that it is for Friar Tuck, Robin raises his dark glasses and murmurs “No, not hang Friar Tu—”, realizes that the Sheriff is watching, and drops his glasses again, going back into character: “Uh, hang Friar Tuck?” I believe that this is one of the funniest parts of the movie, and I was still laughing about it five minutes afterwards. You be the judge if it was funny or not.
As Robin leaves, he walks up to Little John, who is hiding behind the walls. He says that they have got to make a jail break that night, or else Friar Tuck will die at dawn.
So, later that night—after watching the movie many times, I guess that it is about one or two in the morning; the sun rises at the end of the scene, and in England the sun rises at about three in the morning in the summer, when this movie takes place—Robin Hood and Little John sneak into the castle. After grabbing Nutsy and taking his clothing, Robin sneaks even further inside, stealing the sleeping Sheriff’s keys and letting Little John into the jail.
Little John releases Friar Tuck first—his cell comes before all the others—and together they break the rest of Nottingham’s residents out.
During this time, Robin Hood has snuck up into Prince John’s private room, where all the gold is. He shoots an arrow with a string attached into the jail, Little John loops the arrow through a hole in the wall and shoots it back—the only time in the movie where he shoots—and the arrow pierces the wall above Prince John, who continues sleeping.
Robin starts tying the bags to the rope, which is pulled across the courtyard and into the jail. Inside the jail, all of the residents grab the bags and start distributing them evenly. As Friar Tuck says, which I found particularly funny, “Praise the Lord. And send out the tax rebates.”
At dawn, Robin is about to finish up the rest of the bags of money, but he gets careless and one rips. As it passes over the courtyard, a few coins fall out, and land on the Sheriff’s nose. The Sheriff wakes up, and sees the bags. Before he can do anything, however, Little John grabs him from behind, slips into his clothes, and assumes the Sheriff’s previous position. He then grabs Trigger and motions everybody out to a wagon.
Robin finishes off the bags, and then jumps onto the rope himself. But Hiss wakes up, sees what is happening, and grabs one of the bags. This wakes Prince John up, and he starts ordering his remaining guards to kill the people.
Robin hurries to the wagon, but in the hubbub one of the rabbits is left behind. He quickly goes to get her, but in doing so has to go back into the castle. He grabs her, but he gate closes in front of him. After slipping her through the gate and into Little John’s hands, he whispers, “Don’t worry about me” and starts climbing the gate itself. He climbs back to Prince John’s bedroom, trying to find an escape route, but the Sheriff—underwear and all—confronts him and sets the building on fire. As Robin escapes, he is left with no choice but to jump from the highest window.
As the sun rises, he lands in the water, arrows landing all around him. He slips under. On the nearby bank, Little John and the rabbit boy watch, hoping that he will emerge momentarily. But when his hat floats to the surface, Little John sheds a few tears. I myself shed tears after seeing this, even though I knew what was going to happen.
While Prince John and Hiss celebrate on top of the castle, Little John and the boy simply stand still, the boy digging his face into Little John’s fur. Then he looks into the water and sees a stick pointing vertically, edging closer.
“Little John, lookit, lookit!” he cries. Little John peers at it, trying to see through the murky water. Then, the stick sprays him with water, and Robin Hood’s head emerges. The boy leaps up onto Robin’s shoulders, all of them happy.
All of them except Prince John, that is. He sees Robin Hood, and starts losing his temper. Before he can hit Hiss upside the head, however, he is pointed out what has happened to his mother’s castle, and starts sucking his thumb. Then he starts hitting Hiss.
The final scene of the movie shows Robin Hood—fully dressed in green-and-white noble’s clothing—and Maid Marian being married. Then we see King Richard, standing with Friar Tuck, exclaiming that he now had “an outlaw for an in-law.”
Robin and Marian come to a carriage, which will take them on their honeymoon and their eventual home. The coachman is no other than Little John, who will obviously be with Robin for the rest of their days. And boarding the carriage is the rabbit boy, who says that “Robin will have kids, and somebody’s got to watch them sometime.”
As the carriage pulls away, an arrow fired by one of the vultures—both of the vultures, Prince John, Hiss, and the Sheriff are now reduced to chipping rocks—waywardly hits the carriage, piercing the heart on the back of it. Thus, though the movie doesn’t say, they all lived happily ever after.
One thing that I especially noticed in Robin Hood was that it had a tendency to repeat animation sequences. As I looked, I saw sequences from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats being completely re-animated to fit the characters of Robin Hood. Even its own sequences copy themselves; one example is the Rhino Army Marching sequence, used at least six times throughout the movie. Regardless, this is a minor—and forgivable—setback of Robin Hood, which is really a great movie because of its story.
One of the things I enjoy about Robin Hood is the humor in it; in fact, the whole movie is centered around humor. This was Disney’s last film that didn’t involve magic or death or separation to help the story along, and in being so is one of the Studio’s greatest children’s movie, though it is in all regards for both children and adults.
There is no doubt about it—Robin Hood was Walt Disney’s ultimately best film of the 1970s.
