02. THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE: Olivia’s toymaker father has been kidnapped by a peg-legged bat, and with the help of Dr. David Dawson, she travels to the home of Basil of Baker Street, the Great Mouse Detective. A simple kidnapping case quickly turns into a battle of wills between two mice: one a brilliant deductive mind for justice, the other a boastful play-Rat determined to gain the ultimate power of all mousedom. Based off the BASIL OF BAKER STREET books (themselves an homage to the great Sherlock Holmes stories), this was just a remarkable movie, fitting in with the cutesy designs Disney’s known for, while again taking on the Detective Genre. While there’s not really much of a mystery here (it’s another take on the Master Detective vs. Master Criminal duality story), the film does a great job at setting up a great detailed world of late 19th century London, and another great cast of characters. Basil is probably one of the best parodies of Sherlock Holmes, but pretty much the character stays true to form, both with his deductive nature (some of my favorite moments of this film is just watching this hyperactive minded mouse conducting experiments and methodically quoting his thought process; best example being the big trap moment). Plus, having Vincent Price playing your main villain is always a nice touch, especially when he’s on the top of his game. While the Rattigan character is never a parallel of Price himself, he’s a wonderfully upper crust wannabe that makes the best usages of Price’s best acting qualities (to the end of his life, Price often said Rattigan was one of his favorite characters to perform, and his acting’s pinpoints that completely: you can tell he’s loving every minute of it). Much like ATLANTIS, I love the action in this film, but where Atlantis used more realistic character action and more sci-fi elements, GMD makes every use of the fact it’s a cartoon (one chase in a toy store perfectly fits the location, plus the size of the characters and their abilities). In fact, the last fifteen-twenty minutes of this film is probably one of my favorite film climaxes in general (it’s a long chase that starts bubbly and fun, and then the tone quickly turns darker and darker in its actions). Plus, the first use of CGI in Disney Animation is used sparsely, but perfectly (very RAIDER-esque, made all the better through the pacing and the great score). I hesitate sometimes regarding this film as underrated, considering it wasn’t a failure with audiences, and there’s often another DVD edition that occasionally comes out, but it’s also one of those films that just don’t often get talked about, but even still, this was just on the cusp of the Disney Renaissance, and I often consider it one of the first where the whole production company was gelling very well and would ultimately come to their greatest successes.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:48:42 +0000
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