Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a present for the holiday season from the Disney studios. It's like getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking. Made in blatant imitation of Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks concerns the singularly unengaging adventures of an amateur witch named Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) and her three cockney charges (Roy Snart, Ian Weighill and Cindy O'Callaghan) during the early days of England's involvement in the second World War. It must be the first movie in history to combine Nazis and singing fish.
Miss Price is about to complete a correspondence course in witchcraft when her broomstick arrives in the mail without the final lesson. She bundles the kids onto a magic brass bed that flies them away from their little cottage by the white cliffs of Dover for a trip to London. The "headmaster" of the correspondence school, a sidewalk sorcerer named Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson), joins the group in a search for a magic amulet that will com plete the correspondence course and secure Miss Price's powers.
They journey in the magic bed to the enchanted Isle of Naboombu, which is populated, in predictable Disney tradition, by anthropomorphic cartoon creatures. Professor Browne wrests the amulet from the lion king and the jolly group is off again, back to the cliffside cottage where they settle down to battle Germans with their sorcery.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks could use some magic itself. The fantasy is earthbound, the score by Richard and Robert Sherman (who also wrote music and lyrics for Mary Poppins) is forgettable, the special effects lackadaisical. There are so many ill-concealed wires in one sequence that the actors look like marionettes. Miss Lansbury has not yet fully recovered from playing Mame, and Director Robert Stevenson has accomplished what has long been rumored to be impossible. He has found three British children totally devoid of talent. If only W.C. Fields were here to throttle them.
As usual, the Disney animators take the day. The cartoon sequences in Naboombu are frustratingly brief but charming. An interlude in a dance hall under the Naboombu Lagoon and an other of an uproarious soccer match between the animals are reminiscent of the days when the Disney people used to make really good movies.