The Great Mouse detective

Verdict

It's the big chase scene and I look incredibly nonchalant while eating a packet of crisps. I liked it when I was little but when I returned to Basil as a teenager, I loved it, and the more I continue to watch it over the years, the more I enjoy it. While at university, in company of fellow English and Drama students, I came to realise that literary and theatrical types adore this film, primarily because it is a very clever adaptation produced with such a dramatic and nuanced flair. Basil the Great Mouse Detective is an incredibly enjoyable film, featuring one of the sharpest, wittiest and most intelligent scripts in the canon. Disney animated films have played around with adaptations of (originally) British material many times, but this film really captures Englishness the best so far. The character animation is some of the greatest that I've seen since The Jungle Book and the dynamic between the hero and the villain is, for me, my favourite protagonist-antagonist relationship so far in The Disney Odyssey. I haven't laughed this much watching a Disney film since watching Robin Hood. The Big Ben clock tower climax still gives me goosebumps - it is so intense, well-executed in terms of animation and score, and it is a fantastic stand-off between Basil and Ratigan.

Any issues that I have with the film are relatively minor. I can see where cut-backs have been made, particularly in terms of still backgrounds and some cheaper looking animation (but it is nowhere near Robin Hood levels of cheap). Let Me be Good to You is a jarring song in what is generally a very authentic-looking nineteenth-century setting. I do wish they had held a bit longer on Basil's possible death, but as always, there's the fear of upsetting les enfants. In a way because the film is so good and has such a fantastic pace, it is a shame that the film isn't longer. At the end when we hear Basil and Dawson on another case, I want to see more of these characters! Again mere minor details (also learn what a crumpet looks like!), but despite that, it is a very impressive film that does not patronise its audience, but instead entertains with brilliant character animation, a sharp and witty script, a tight narrative structure, excellent storyboarding and a wonderful balance between humour, emotion and tension. An underrated film, it is a greater gem than Disney ever gives it credit for. The new generation of animators should be very proud. Once more unto the breach! The game's afoot for Disney Animation!

Legacy

Basil the Great Mouse Detective made a profit, was a moderate financial success of over $25 million at the domestic box office and was well-received by critics.

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised it, pointing out that Disney had been 'cutting corners' in recent decades but computers are here to save the day, somewhat foreshadowing the future for animation: 'A movie like The Great Mouse Detective ... looks more fully animated than anything in some 30 years ... For a long time, I was down on the full-length animated efforts of Disney and others, because they didn't seem to reflect the same sense of magic and wonderment that the original animated classics always had ... But now, maybe thanks to computers, animated movies are beginning to sparkle again'.

Nina Darton from the New York Times seemed to love the film: 'Many of the new crop of children's animated movies are so saturated with powdered sugar that one suspects just watching them will produce cavities. What a treat it is to see an animated feature that doesn't moralize or patronize young children, or drown them in bathos. With The Great Mouse Detective ... the Disney people have gone back to the basics that have delighted children and their parents for half a century ... The heroes are appealing, the villains have that special Disney flair - humorous blackguards who really enjoy being evil -and the script is witty and not overly sentimental. Basil is a delightfully cool character. He doesn't even especially like children'.

The film was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Motion Picture, and Susanne Pollatschek was nominated for a Young Artist Award. It won the Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing at the Motion Picture Sound Editors Awards.

The Care Bears Movie II was released the same year but unlike 1985 with The Black Cauldron, Basil was not defeated by the cuddly little bears.

Care bear-staring will not bring you financial success

Knowing they must never be defeated by greeting cards bears, Katzenberg hatched a scheme:

And voila! The film didn't even make half what Basil made. Disney could breathe easy. However ...

Meanwhile at another studio: Don Bluth formed a rather dynamic partnership in 1984 ... with Steven Spielberg. But not only did Bluth have Spielberg, he also had Universal and the Sears marketing department behind his film, An American Tail - coincidentally a film also about rodents.



Soon this will become much more common with animation studios ...

The film had 'American' in the title, and it was about a significant part in US history - immigration. Put that against a film set in Victorian England in which they were concerned that the original title was too British, and inevitably there will be trouble. An American Tail became the highest grossing non-Disney animated film to that date, making over $47 million at the domestic box office. It is incredibly fortunate that these two films were not released at the exact same time (it came out four months after Basil) - if that had happened, perhaps there would have been no Disney Renaissance. However, while An American Tail was commercially successful, the critics were not quite so keen, with Roger Ebert giving it two stars out of four, and Vincent Canby from The New York Times giving it two out of five stars. Basil was critically more successful than An American Tail, but was still nevertheless overshadowed. Personally we both think that Basil is a much better film than An American Tail. The underscore for the latter is excellent and there are some very touching emotional moments (especially the ending), but the film is completely all over the place: the narrative structure is very choppy, the animation is uneven, the songs vary in quality, it is tonally very depressing, and most of the characters are either irritating or forgettable.

It was another wake up call for Disney, as Glen Keane recalls. He said that he was shocked, as he didn't even like An American Tail and yet it did so amazingly well - he remembers Katzenberg saying, 'We are going to get back that mantle'. However despite An American Tail's huge success, the success of Basil (especially in relation to the bleak failure of 1985), gave new management, Katzenberg, Wells, and Eisner, confidence in the abilities of the animation department. Without Basil's success, there would be no The Little Mermaid. It is a huge milestone in Disney's history, bigger than it is ever given credit for. But then again, isn't that very typical of Holmes?

The film was re-released at the cinema in 1992 and also on VHS that same year. Disney must have been shaken by the calamity that came with the film's title that they changed the name of the film ... again. This time to The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective. That's ... no better. First of all, they're not adventures! Sigh. Why not just call it Basil of Baker Street and get it over with? It has been released on DVD, but of course, does not receive the special treatment that certain Disney films get. Shame. It'd be great to hear a commentary!

Lastly, Basil the Great Mouse Detective is truly up there with the great adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. It even left its own legacy in future adaptations. With the huge popularity of Sherlock Holmes adaptations these days and the greater warmth from the US market towards British films and actors, it makes us wonder whether Basil the Great Mouse Detective would be more popular if released now ...