Day 10 The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Technically, the title of this film on home video is “The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective”, but somewhere along the way, the precursor phrase gets dropped. IMDB doesn’t require it, it stops being used in the promotional material, and even my search page on the poster site that I use, which is very fussy, acknowledges the shorter version. So the added words were probably a marketing tool when the film was released on VHS. What is frustrating is that neither title really should have been used. This should be “Basil of Baker Street”. The story is that Studio Chairman Michael Eisner , seeing the disappointing box office of “Young Sherlock Holmes” ordered the title change to the incredibly literal “The Great Mouse Detective”. The animators subsequently mocked that decision by bandying about alternate titles for other Disney Classics like “Seven Little Men help a Girl”.

Regardless of the title, the film was subsequently successful and is a bit of a transition from the older Disney style to the renaissance that was to come with “the Little Mermaid”. This was also the first Disney film to make use of the then innovative concept of computer generated images. The climax of the movie inside the gearworks of the Big Ben Clock Tower were created using computer wireframe designs.

Before I had kids, I might occasionally feel odd about attending a children’s film with just my wife, but I had always been an animation fan so this was going to be a theatrical experience no matter what. It has been a number of years since I saw this and the first thing that I realized I’d forgotten is how good the animation here looked. “Oliver and Company”, which came two years after this, looks primitive by comparison. This was truly fluid animation and the character designs were more natural despite the cartoon nature. The main characters are detailed and they move in dramatic animated fashion. . The villain is Ratigan, a rat posing as a mouse, he is large, barrel chested and elaborately costumed in all of his scenes. When you add the vocal performance of Vincent Price, it will be easy to see that this will be the most memorable character in the film.

Basil by contrast, is lean, his clothes are not flashy, and the voice actor is not nearly as distinctive. He is played more as a dilettante than the sharp, incisive character we know from the Basil Rathbone version of Holmes. (Yes, the name Basil in the book series was inspired by the actor most famous for playing Holmes). At one point he despairs of having been outwitted, and that personality quirk made the character less compelling as a result.

There are a number of terrific scenes in the film but I want to highlight just two of them. When Vincent Price sings the villain song, it takes place in Ratigan’s lair, and the variety of mice and the activities they engage in are pretty vivid. It is here that we get our best looks at the bad guy and the details really make this a shining moment in the film.

The second sequence of note takes place in a beerhall. First of all, this is a Disney film and the fact that the mice are all drinking beer is a bit odd. There is also plenty of cigarette smoking taking place, but this is years before anyone was putting disclaimers about tobacco products in the credits. During the sequence, there are a series of vaudeville style performers on stage and all of them are interesting animated acts, including a juggling octopus. As with most scenes in a story like this, there is also a fight and there are several creative moments in that confrontation.

The story is not too sophisticated, it is a kids version of how a bad guy might try to take over the world. Set in the Victorian period on the Jubilee, it involves Ratigan attempting to replace Queen Victoria with a mechanical substitute who will name him as first advisor. That Basil and Dr. Dawson (not Watson) will prevail is not ultimately in doubt, but the cute little girl mouse who brings them into the plot does become an object of rescue and that will work for a young audience as well.

I was really impressed with the look of the film, and maybe that is because I enjoyed it in all of it’s glory on my Laserdisc player. I am in the process of sorting all my discs so I can find the titles a bit easier, and this came up yesterday. I’m not a tech geek on this format, as many of the fans of this relic technology are. My player is simply plugged into the composite inputs on the TV, no other upscaling, no filters, and no fancy audio system. I once had several of those in place but it got complicated and those were not the main reason I am still loyal to the format.

If I do another post on my other movie a day site, recommending Summer Films for the family, as I have a couple of times before, “The Great Mouse Detective” will certainly go on the list. But even if you don’t have kids, this is an enjoyable, relatively short film that will allow you to appreciate traditional animation and Vincent Price, what more could you want?