The Great Mouse Detective

Plot

In 1897 London, a young mouse named Olivia Flaversham is celebrating her birthday with her father, a skilled toymaker who raises her alone. A bat with a damaged wing and a wooden leg suddenly appears and takes Mr. Flaversham away. Olivia sets off to find Basil of Baker Street, the renowned Great Mouse Detective. Along the way, she meets David Q. Dawson, a retired army surgeon mouse who has just come back from Afghanistan, and he accompanies her to Basil’s home.

Basil first brushes them off, but when Olivia describes the bat, he recognizes it as Fidget, the henchman of Professor Ratigan, a criminal mastermind Basil has been pursuing. It turns out Ratigan kidnapped Flaversham to force him to build a clockwork replica of the Mouse Queen, so Ratigan can take her place as the supreme ruler of all mice. Flaversham initially refuses, but gives in when Ratigan threatens to hurt Olivia. Fidget later appears at Basil’s window and vanishes.

Basil, Dawson, and Olivia borrow Toby, Sherlock Holmes’s basset hound, to follow Fidget’s scent. The trail leads to a toyshop built for humans. While searching, Dawson finds a checklist left by Fidget, and Basil learns that Fidget has been stealing clockwork parts and toy soldier uniforms. Fidget then ambushes them and kidnaps Olivia.

Basil runs chemical tests on the checklist and determines it came from a tavern called the Rat Trap, located where the sewer meets the Thames. Basil and Dawson disguise themselves as sailors and go to the tavern. They spot Fidget and tail him to Ratigan’s hideout, but Ratigan catches them. He ties the pair to a spring-loaded mousetrap linked to a Rube Goldberg machine full of deadly devices.

Ratigan then heads to Buckingham Palace, where his gang takes over the royal guards and kidnaps the Mouse Queen. After hearing a comment from Dawson, Basil figures out the trap’s weak point and frees himself, Dawson, and Olivia.

Voice cast

The voice cast of The Great Mouse Detective includes Vincent Price as Professor Ratigan, a villainous rat who despises being reminded of his rodent nature and is Basil's longtime nemesis. Barrie Ingham plays Basil, a brilliant mouse detective residing on Baker Street, and also voices Bartholomew, a drunken mouse who works for Ratigan. Val Bettin portrays David Q. Dawson, a former soldier in the Queen's 66th Regiment in Afghanistan who becomes Basil's partner, friend, and biographer, and also narrates the film; Bettin additionally voices one of Ratigan's thug guards.

Susanne Pollatschek plays Olivia Flaversham, a young Scottish mouse seeking Basil's help to find her father. Candy Candido voices Fidget, Ratigan's clumsy bat henchman with a crippled wing that prevents flight, and also a reprobate in a pub. Diana Chesney is Mrs. Judson, Basil's housekeeper who is frequently frustrated by his behavior. Eve Brenner voices the Mouse Queen, whom Ratigan tries to overthrow.

Alan Young plays Mr. Flaversham, Olivia's loving Scottish father who runs a toy shop. Shani Wallis voices Lady Mouse, a female mouse Basil and Dawson agree to assist at the film's end. Basil Rathbone provides the voice of Sherlock Holmes, the human detective living above Basil, using audio from a 1966 Caedmon Records recording of "The Red-Headed League." Laurie Main portrays Watson.

Additional voices include Wayne Allwine, Tony Anselmo, and Walker Edmiston as Ratigan's thug guards, and Melissa Manchester as Miss Mouse, who sings "Let Me Be Good To You."

Production

The notion of a Sherlock Holmes story starring animals first came up while The Rescuers was being made. Layout artist Joe Hale suggested turning Eve Titus’s Basil of Baker Street books into a film, but the idea stalled because it seemed too similar to The Rescuers. In 1982, Ron Clements revived the proposal with story artist Pete Young, and Disney president Ron Miller gave it the green light. Animators unhappy with The Black Cauldron’s direction helped push Basil of Baker Street forward as an alternative.

Burny Mattinson and John Musker were the first directors, with Dave Michener later joining as co-director, and Miller took on the producer role. Early plans made Olivia an older character who would be Dawson’s love interest and the victim, but Miller suggested she become a little girl to win audience sympathy. A stool pigeon who tipped off Basil from Buckingham Palace was cut so the detective could solve cases on his own. After Miller left in 1984, Michael Eisner became CEO and brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg as studio chairman.

A story reel screening led them to complain about the slow pace and demand rewrites before animation began. The film was originally set for Christmas 1987 with a $24 million budget, but Eisner halved it to $10 million and moved the release to July 1986, leaving the team only a year. Roy E. Disney made Mattinson director/producer, but Mattinson found the dual role too demanding and stayed as producer. Musker and Michener kept their director titles, and with the tight schedule, Clements was added as a director.

Reception

On At the Movies, critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film a two thumbs up rating. In The Chicago Tribune, Siskel praised it as the most truly memorable animated feature in 25 years, saying it travels a wide emotional range from cuddly to scary. In the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert gave three stars out of four, praising the animation and comparing it to Disney's golden age, summarizing that the result looks more fully animated than anything in some 30 years.

London's Time Out wrote that as usual with film noir, the villain steals the heart and one roots for him in the breathtaking showdown in Big Ben. Nina Darnton of The New York Times applauded that the heroes are appealing, the villains have special Disney flair, and the script is witty and not overly sentimental. Johanna Steinmetz of The Chicago Tribune graded the film three-and-a-half stars, writing that it is a higher grade of cute than The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, and that the key to good Disney animation is character and facial expression.

Alex Stewart in White Dwarf #83 stated that after The Black Cauldron, it is good to see Disney taking a step towards the world of animation as it is today, with a looser, more vigorous style and effective amalgamation of computer-drawn clockwork with hand-drawn characters. Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating based on reviews, with a consensus that the film may not rank with Disney's classics but is amiable and entertaining with stylishly dark visuals.

Metacritic gave a score of 73, indicating generally favorable reviews. Animation critic Charles Solomon listed it as one of the best animated films of the 1980s, singling out Keane's key work on Ratigan.

Did You Know?

• No soundtrack album was released alongside the film; it was released in 1992 alongside the film's reissue under its new title by Varèse Sarabande.
• Michael Jackson was considered by Eisner to voice a character who would enter the saloon and sing a song, but the suggestion was met with uncomfortable silence and Eisner withdrew the idea.
• Basil and Professor Ratigan were characters for meet-and-greet at Disney Parks until both were retired after 2004.