Strictly average movie

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

"Magic Boy" is one of the earliest films I remember seeing as a child. I saw it with my sister around 1960 at a special showing in a now-gone San Diego theater in the Pacific Beach area. The title, basic story, and theme melody were very memorable to both of us, and many years later we could still recall fragments of the movie.By far the most memorable characteristic of this movie for both of us was its extraordinarily long length. IMDb indicates this film is 83 minutes long, which is about the length of the version shown on the TCM channel in recent years, but the original version we saw was *much* longer than that, almost certainly 3-4 hours long. Obviously such a long film is poorly suited to children and their typically short attention spans. After a while the excessive length became ridiculous: the catchy theme melody with lyrics "Magic Boy, Magic Boy" sung by ladies in harmony would start to play at the end of each battle, it would seem like the end of the movie, we would prepare to leave the theater, then another part of the story would start anew. This pattern happened several times in succession until eventually we just wanted the movie to end. My sister remembers a battle with a dragon, which I don't remember and which isn't in the 83-minute version.As an adult re-watching this movie, my main impressions were that it wasn't particularly appealing, and it was even a bit weird. There is a strangely long scene early in the movie where the friendly animals are eating at a dinner table outside, with annoyingly cute music playing, and weird dubbed adult male voices for the animal sounds, but very little is going on despite the long length of this scene. This strange dinner scene is immediately followed by another strange series of incidents where a cloud of angry bees shift their attack from the bear who was disturbing their hive to an innocent fawn, then the fleeing fawn is snatched up by a hawk (as if a hawk could lift a deer!), then the deer is inexplicably dropped into a lake instead of being carried to the hawk's nest. Then the fawn is immediately attacked by a large toothy salamander in the lake that looks more like a crocodile (as if a salamander would eat a deer!), but this attack is prolonged as if the salamander is merely playing with the fawn, and all the while weird warbling sounds are played, with no dialog or cries for help for a long time. It kept seeming like there were important things that were missing, like calls for help, or Sasuke running to the rescue, or something more important happening at the dinner table. This film definitely doesn't flow as smoothly and evenly as one has come to expect from animated Disney filmsOther pointless acts of violence occur throughout the film, such as where traveling bandits attack and burn down an entire town, then kidnap a little girl and threaten to push her over a cliff. Likewise, the evil witch is constantly attacking people. There is no blood, however, despite many warriors being shown cut down in battle by katana swords. Also annoying are the lyrics sung by a man (Danny Valentino) in the theme song at both the beginning and end, which are annoyingly puerile, like "'cause he was good" and an interjected "Boo!" when describing the witch.Some positive things I can say about the film are that it has a definite oriental cultural feel to it, there are a lot of animals for the kids, there is a lot of action, nice scenery, the magic/invisibility aspects will appeal to kids, and the film's novelty makes it memorable. At least some of the writing in Sasuke's parting note is authentic Japanese script, and there are traditional Japanese-Chinese attributes like the story being of epic length, there are steep mountains with narrow mountain trails and wooden footbridges over deep chasms reminiscent of Chinese paintings, carried buckets of water, katana swords, a Japanese castle, a wooden board gong, bamboo chimes, male warriors with their hair tied into pony tails, kimonos, wood block pillows, and so on. There are valuable lessons about perseverance and hard work, but the unrealistic aspects dealing with magic, invisibility, levitation, and telekinesis partly negate those bits of educational value. Overall, I'd say the main value of this film is entertainment for children. Adults who are interested in animation, especially the history of Japanese animation, will find this to be a historically valuable data point, but I can't imagine many adults could stand the annoying theme songs and music, the weird animal voice dubs, and the story's lapses in logic and realism.

I saw this movie on the big screen when I was 9 years old. The witch was as scary and impressive as the one in Sleeping Beauty. The boy's progression through learning magic was inspiring that all things are possible.I continue to hope that this classic is not lost forever.

Just saw this on TCM and it still has the magic. This is recognizably a Taiji Yabushita film, in that he takes much of his style from classic Disney--fluid (maybe not as fluid as Disney) movement, use of music and imagery, animal sidekicks. It's not as emotionally powerful as his The Orphan Son (his masterpiece, I think), or as all-around well done as Alakazam (his collaboration with Ozamu Tezuka), or as historically important as The White Snake (which influenced Miyazaki) but it has its virtues--the inventive way the hero appears and disappears, the 'transformation battle' that occurs at the climax, the lifelike sword fights of the prince...not Yabushita's best, but still up there, somewhere.

I saw this movie several times around 1963 (in the Philipines) when I was about 5 years old. The movie theater was just across the street from our house and I went there everyday (for free) and I was able to see a lot of movies even at such a young age. I have forgotten many of the movies that I saw then but this one remained etched in my mind. There was something enchanting about this movie and it really mesmerized me. I remember it was about a young boy on some kind of a mission and that he had magical powers. And that's all I remember about this movie!That's why I have not voted on this movie (yet!). I would really like to see it again but this is a very hard to find movie. Perhaps somebody out there can tell me where I can find or buy a copy. Any help is highly appreciated.