Cinema: Lion in Marmalade

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The Fighting Prince of Donenal. Red Hugh O'Donnell, prince of Donegal, was the great Irish hero of the 16th century. At 15, the wild child of the North was such a terror to the English that the viceroy shut him up in Dublin Castle for safekeeping. At 19, he escaped and launched a campaign of impetuous brilliance that drove the British out of Ulster and Connaught. In the next nine years, the O'Donnell and his tall gallo-glavses made Irish stew out of British armies sent against them. Then, while on a mission to the court of Spain. Red Hugh fell afoul of a British agent who accomplished with a philter what could not be done by force.

Walt Disney, who has previously shown a not-altogether-punctilious concern with things Celtic (The Sword in the Stone), has now undertaken to preserve this heroic figure as he always preserves a heroic figure: by embalming it in marmalade. In the new movie, one of the great fighting Irishmen is transformed into a priggish Prince Valiant and his complex politico-military career made into the sort of primary-colored comic strip that parents consider safe and children consider dull.

As usual in Disney's economy epics, the plaster castles are impeccably constructed and the faces of the principals (Peter McEnery and Susan Hampshire) are so nice that they make a theater feel like church. Anybody who sees any redeeming historical merit in this agreeable guff would believe that the River Shannon flows down the middle of Sunset Boulevard.