Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the film and the story, but it seems a lot longer now than what I remembered as a kid. Be it the additional dance scenes re-added to the "Portobello Road" sequence, or the fact that the old, taped-off-of-TV VHS version that I watched over and over again was edited for commercials, either way I'm not sure the added length does a whole lot to enhance the overall story.
Bedknobs & Broomsticks takes place during World War II in a small British town far enough away from London to make it safe to send kids to during the bombing raids. One such trio of siblings are the Rawlins, Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul (Roy Snart). They are left in the care of Miss Price (Angela Lansbury), much to the chagrin of all four characters. It seems Miss Price greatly enjoys her privacy, which makes sense since she has been learning to be a witch for quite some time now (all via correspondence, so she has never met her professor, mind you).
When the kids discover her secret, they get one of her spells as the price for keeping quiet. This transportation spell is cast on a bedknob. Once reattached to the bed, all you need to do is say where you want to go, tap the knob three times and give it a quarter-turn to the left. The bed (along with its occupants) will then rush off in a Technicolor blur to their destination. Of course, the quartet tries this immediately when Miss Price learns that her schooling has been canceled, and just before she was to get a most important spell that she plans to use in the war effort.
When the group appears in London, they find that Price's teacher, Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson, Mary Poppins), is actually just a street-side hustler who can put on a good show to sell whatever he needs to. Needless to say, he is mighty surprised to find that one of his hustled students can actually work the spells he copied down from an old book he found. But when Miss Price learns that the book Browne has doesn't contain the actual words to the spell she is looking for, Substitutiary Locomotion (which makes inanimate objects move), they learn they have to go to an island ruled by anthropomorphic animals and retrieve a lost necklace to learn the words.
This brings the troupe to one of the most memorable sections of the film, The Island of Naboombu. Here, much like Mary Poppins, the humans find themselves in an animated world and have to try and get the magical necklace off of the inhabitants' ruler, a lion. But first, they must play (and help referee) one of the most unusual games of soccer ever.
Bedknobs & Broomsticks: Enchanted Musical Edition not only comes digitally restored and remastered, but it also has the Sherman Brothers featurette and recording session with Tomlinson found in the previous DVD releases, as well as a deleted song, "A Step in the Right Direction," put to production stills (since the actual film was lost at some point). Another interesting feature has Jennifer Stone (Harper from The Wizards of Waverly Place) learning about how special effects were done in 1971 compared to how they are done now. Especially interesting is the technique pioneered by Disney for Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Mary Poppins for putting live action sequences into animated scenes. While not exactly the same process as today's green and blue screens, the idea is the same with the old Sodium Screen Vapor technique.
All in all, while Bedknobs & Broomsticks didn't hold up to the pedestal I have kept it on all this time, it is still a good classic Disney film. Not quite on par with Mary Poppins, but with the same charm and magic. This is a movie that should be enjoyed both by parents and kids alike, and while the Enchanted Musical Edition doesn't add a whole lot in the way of special features, the remastered aspect is very noticeable. Too bad it didn't also come out on Blu-ray for an even better (theoretically) lift in quality.
