Charles Champlin, also from the "Los Angeles Times", wrote that "The Black Cauldron" lacks "the simplicity and the clarity of great fairy tales, or the child-sized wonder of Margery Sharp's stories that became "The Rescuers," the last really successful Disney animated feature. One wonderful chase in the old riotously inventive slapstick tradition and two minor comic figures suggest the pleasures that can result when the inventing animators have a fertile ground to start from. But a lot of the way the film seems to be dutifully following a rather cumbersome and not overly attractive story."