Angela Lansbury | Table for Five

Bedknobs and Brooksticks: Enchanted Musical Edition

September 18, 2009 By Elizabeth

I have a very, very faint memory of my parents taking my sister and I to the drive-in to see Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and now it’s been newly restored and remastered as Bedknobs and Brooksticks: Enchanted Musical Edition. The movie takes place in England in 1940, with the British Army arriving at a village and rounding up volunteers to fight the Nazis. Angela Lansbury plays Miss Price, a local woman who is asked to look after three orphaned children who have been evacuated from London to the countryside. What the children soon learn is that Miss Price has sent away for a mail-order degree in being a witch! In exchange for not telling her secret, they get her to agree to help them get back to London. She casts a traveling spell that enchants a glass bedknob which will allow their four poster bed to fly. When she gets a letter from the witch school saying they are closing down the apprentice witch program, Miss Price decides to go with the children so she can appeal to the headmaster to give her the spell that could end the war. They find themselves traveling to the animated island of Naboombu to get the spell from the cartoon animals that live there, then returning home to put Miss Price’s talents to use against a Nazi raid.

This movie is absolutely delightful. Angela Lansbury is witty and charming, a very young Roddy McDowell is the village minister, and David Tomlinson (the Dad in Mary Poppins) is Professor Brown, the headmaster. The movie won the 1971 Best Effects Oscar for Special Visual Effects, and Lansbury was nominated for her song “The Age of Believing”. What I like best about this movie is that although it has musical numbers, people don’t burst into song every 5 minutes, like in some Disney musicals. It’s warm and touching and a true “feel good” movie for the whole family. The Enchanted Musical Edition DVD presents the movie fully restored and remastered, with excellent sound quality. The bonus features include a look at the reconstruction and a feature about special effects hosted by Jennifer Stone from Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place. I recommend it for Disney fans and for any family movie collection!