28. The Little Mermaid (1989)

Well, this is it, the film that changed everything for Disney; since the start of the 70’s and the loss of Walt Disney, many of their films just didn’t do well enough critically or financially and though there were a few successes along the way, they were few and far between. It had been thirty years since Disney had done a movie based on a fairy tale, stung from the financial failure of Sleeping Beauty and their attempts at reinventing themselves and trying out new ideas in films such as The Black Cauldron just weren’t working; perhaps it was because of this that Disney decided to put all their money and effort into another fairy tale, in an attempt to recapture that old Disney style and magic, or perhaps it was because their traditional animation department really had nothing left to lose, but for whatever the reason, in 1989 we got The Little Mermaid. The film proceeded to not only bring Disney back to what it was known for in its early years, but also become its biggest hit in years, breathing new life into the animation department and kicking off what is often considered the golden age of Disney animation, better known as the Disney Renaissance. But, for all its landmark accomplishments, is The Little Mermaid itself truly a great film? The answer is yes, mostly, but despite all the good it did for Disney, it does have some familiar problems that can’t be ignored.

The animation is some of the best we’ve seen in years, which is not to say that the quality is necessarily that much better than recent films such as The Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective, but it is the energy, the care and the attention to detail that really sets The Little Mermaid apart from its contemporaries and harkens back to the passionate animation of the early Disney classics. The characters, especially Ariel and Ursula, are wonderfully expressive through their movements and facial expressions, they emote so strongly and really communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively – while always nice to see, this is especially important in a film as emotional as this one and because Ariel spends almost half the movie with no voice and so it falls entirely on the animation of her expressions and movements to translate her character and feelings, a challenge the animators rise to with aplomb. Another challenge for the animation is the fact that the characters spend a great deal of the movie underwater and again, the attention to detail in this regard is just fantastic – the movement of Ariel’s hair, based on footage of astronaut Sally Ride when she was in space, is so elegant and controlled and even better is that of Triton’s, who not only has long flowing hair but also a long flowing beard and both are animated moving with the currents expertly. The animation does have its problems, there are a few flubs and moments where characters are off-model or move particularly awkwardly and much of the film does have kind of an 80’s grime to it – this is more of a precursor to the Renaissance, we’re not quite there yet – but these are minor problems in an otherwise very well animated film.

The character designs are a welcome and successful return to the original Disney style; though the last few films have mostly done away with that rough and scratchy style propagated by the xerographic process of animation beginning with One Hundred and One Dalmatians, this is where it is finally completely eradicated and a conscious effort is made to return to the softer, more rounded designs of the early Disney films. This is especially noticeable in Ariel and Eric, who look very much like the classic Disney princess and prince (And oddly, each other, both having the same weird hair quiff) but with a modern spin on things; the film takes these classic designs and injects new life into them, updating them while still keeping what made them charming and, appropriately, timeless, in the first place. As is often the case, particularly in the Renaissance, the character with the best design has to be the villain, Ursula, how can you not love a bad guy modelled after a drag queen? Not only is her design bold and memorable, but her animation is fantastic, with loads of great exaggerated movements and creepy grins that would make The Grinch squirm, never underestimate the importance of body language indeed. The backgrounds are also very nice, though the ones on land are just good, the underwater scenes look great and, once again, are reminiscent of early Disney films in their detail, being mostly similar to the equally wonderful underwater backgrounds in Pinocchio, both are teeming with a sense of life and mystery well suited to the almost completely foreign world of the deep ocean.

‘why so serious??’ - guess the movie ;))

Following the theme of re-imagining ideas from early Disney movies for a modern audience, the story is a fairy tale which returns to the classic Disney ideas of true love, dreams and wishes and so on; where The Little Mermaid succeeds in this, however, is in the fact that it takes these old ideas and puts a new spin on them, rather than just copying them outright like Cinderella, allowing the film to recapture the joy and spirit of classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, rather than simply repeat them. The Little Mermaid adds a more contemporary sense of humour with characters such as Sebastian and Scuttle and inserts more modern, feminist sensibilities by giving Ariel real characteristics, hopes and dreams – she yearns to explore the world above the ocean and rails against her father’s old fashioned beliefs and attempts to coddle her. Unfortunately, despite these admirable attempts, Disney is not quite able to separate The Little Mermaid from the uncomfortable and dated gender issues prominent in the early Disney films and it is here that the film suffers the most, as we see a return to some very familiar problems.

Ariel is still much better developed than her predecessors – Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora – she has a personality beyond just being nice, being rather absent minded and eccentric, as well as rebellious and headstrong. In Disney’s attempts to modernise the style of their early films, Ariel is seemingly an attempt at creating a stronger and more independent female protagonist, as well as one more relatable for an 80’s audience – her story arc is set up to be a classic struggle between teenage daughter and overbearing father, she wants to be treated like an adult and allowed to explore the world, while he wants to keep her safe and is afraid of her leaving him behind and so continues to treat her like a child. We are clearly supposed to empathise and relate with Ariel and want to see her prove her independence and responsibility to Triton and, in turn, be allowed to explore the surface world she loves so much and start a life with Eric. However, this doesn’t really work because Ariel just comes off as... well, a teenage girl. She is naive and self-involved, she thinks she’s special and that she knows better than her father, when really, she doesn’t; she wants to be taken seriously and given responsibility, but she proves time and again that she can’t handle it, constantly putting herself and her friends in harm’s way and needing to be bailed out by Daddy. 

Ariel’s fascination with the surface world is just that, a surface fascination – she knows nothing of what the outside world is really like, she is enamoured with the idea of it, simply because it is new and different, it may be a goofy line from a talking crab, but Sebastian is right when he says ‘the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.’ This extends to Ariel’s infatuation with Eric as well, it is based purely on the surface, namely his looks – she declares her love for him before she’s even spoken to him, before she knows anything about him or his personality, purely because he is handsome; in these moments, Ariel seems less like an ambitious and strong willed young woman and more like a naive schoolgirl, who obsesses over a man, a world and a life she doesn’t even know, just because she’s bored of her own. If this idea was explored properly, with Ariel perhaps discovering that the surface world and Eric are not quite what they seemed and that there is no such thing as a perfect world, then The Little Mermaid would have made for a very interesting and mature film, however, because things are played straight and we are expected to support Ariel in her whimsical and misguided beliefs, the central drive of the film just falls flat.

‘Now I know for sure, that’s the man I love and we’re gonna be together no matter what! ...What was his name again? Lester?’

Ariel’s behaviour gets very frustrating not only because of how childish she is, but because of how it impacts on the other characters – she decides to give up her friends, family, voice and entire way of life, just to be with a man she’s never even spoken to, which is not only stupid, but incredibly selfish of her to leave everyone she is supposed to care about behind for someone she doesn’t even know. While her frustration with Triton is understandable, considering how overbearing he is, her refusal to even consider Flounder or Sebastian’s feelings is pretty hard to rationalise; though Sebastian can be bossy, he obviously cares for Ariel and puts himself and his position in danger to help her and Flounder frequently puts his life in danger and does everything Ariel asks of him with no question, yet she never really thanks them or shows any real gratitude for their sacrifice and seems perfectly willing to leave them behind forever for, again, a man she DOESN’T KNOW. Ultimately, this leads to the entire ocean being put in danger because Ariel was foolish enough to sign herself away to Ursula, her selfishness and quite frankly, stupidity brings her home, friends and family very close to complete destruction and again, she barely seems to appreciate this, her attention is always on Eric. 

The romance between Ariel and Eric is just too flimsy to justify this behaviour, The Little Mermaid manages to modernise and appropriate many of the best aspects of the earlier Disney movies, but it fails to fix the familiar problem of “prince and princess meet, fall in love, get married after spending about five minutes together”; Snow White may have had the excuse of being old-fashioned and the first Disney movie, but it’s way too late in the game at this point to excuse this poorly developed relationship. Ariel and Eric fall in love at first sight (Or first sound, in Eric’s case) and are desperate to be together, despite having no idea if they’ll even get along; they do spend three days together, but we barely get to see any of that time and in those three days Ariel can’t speak, meaning that even when their relationship “develops”, it is still based primarily, if not solely on looks. I know I’m harping on about this and it’s not like this one aspect ruins the whole movie, but it is a pretty big aspect, as Ariel’s “love” for Eric is at the centre of the story and really, I just don’t like the implications of their relationship and the kind of message it sends to young girls: that your friends, family and sense of individuality aren’t as important as looks and that if you see a guy and happen to think he’s cute, then that means you’re destined to be together and you should throw away everything and everyone you know just for a chance to be with him. I know Disney is all about fairy tales and following your dreams, but you can still be rational as well as idealistic and The Little Mermaid just feels kind of irresponsible with the ideas it puts forward.

Still, despite getting on my nerves at times, I do find Ariel sweet and likeable and she is definitely an improvement over previous Disney princess protagonists. The other characters are not bad either – Eric is generally a stereotypical Disney prince, most similar to Prince Charming from Cinderella, he’s nice but a bit boring, though to be fair, he certainly has much more personality and time dedicated to him than previous Disney princes, as we see glimpses of a rebellious, adventurous and wise cracking side, but he still doesn’t have enough to him for Ariel’s infatuation with him to really be justified. Triton is a very generic overbearing father character, he’s bossy and harsh but he means well and he learns to respect his daughter and let her follow her dreams yada yada yada he’s pretty boring. Flounder is just there to be cute and sell toys, considering how identifiable he is with The Little Mermaid and how large a part he plays in its spin-off material and merchandise, I was surprised how little he did in the film, he hardly gets more than five lines and really isn’t in it very much at all. Scuttle is pretty standard comic relief and though I don’t really find a lot of his antics funny, I do find him oddly charming, though he did get annoying after a while. Sebastian is also there for comic relief, being much more successful, with his character taking some inspiration from earlier villainous comic relief characters such as Sir Hiss and Creeper and providing inspiration for later comic relief characters such as Zazu and Iago. He is enjoyably pompous, stuffy and hypocritical and it’s fun to watch him get his comeuppance for being such a blowhard, though the effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that his advice to Ariel is usually accurate, but whatever. Ursula is a really great villain, she’s deliciously evil, cunning and always looks like she’s having fun, she really seems to enjoy ensnaring Ariel not just because it will allow her to regain control of the sea from Triton, but also because she just finds it fun to bring people misery. She’s funny, capable and effective, she’s just a really good villain and one of Disney’s most memorable.

‘Uh so... do you like... stuff?’

Where The Little Mermaid really shines is in its songs – for years now Disney films had been kind of shying away from the musical format they were known for early on, only slipping in the occasional musical number or background song just to keep up appearances; The Little Mermaid not only brings back the traditional musical style in a big way, but does so even better than ever before. The Little Mermaid is often credited as ‘the film that brought Broadway into cartoons’ and it very much is, managing to appropriate the Broadway musical style of tying musical numbers into story and characterisation better than any of Disney’s previous efforts. The film introduced the team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who would go on to write some of Disney’s best musical scores and here is where they, more than anyone else, really started to understand not just what makes a great Disney musical, but a great musical, period. There are a couple of less memorable songs, namely “Kiss the Girl” which is sweet and catchy, but nothing too special and the oft-forgotten “Les Poissons”, a goofy, high-energy song that comes out of nowhere and has very little to do with the story; I still find it very fun to listen to and you can kind of hear the early beginnings of “Be Our Guest” in its tune, but I understand why it’s not as well known as the others. The other songs however, are all classics, while “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” may have been the first Disney villain song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is where they really get the idea down and set the stage for what will often be the best song for many of the upcoming films. It is big and brassy, the rhythm builds all through the song to a big climax at the end, the lyrics are clever, the animation is great, it is directly involved with and in fact, necessary to the progression of the story, it gives a great insight into Ursula’s character as devious, charming, seductive and theatrical – it does everything a character based musical number should, rather than just being an excuse for a character to sing to fill time, it is relevant, important and just a damn good song. “Part of Your World” is the slow, sentimental song about hopes, dreams and wishes, in other words, the “Whole New World Number”, but it’s one of Disney’s best – a genuinely sweet and sad, but hopeful song with some very nice lyrics and a great opening  which is repeated throughout the movie as Ariel’s character motif.

But best of all is of course, “Under the Sea”. This is it, this is where Disney really nailed it, where everything came together and they finally harmonised their style of storytelling with the traditional Broadway musical format and created their first truly perfect song. If “Poor Unfortunate Souls” was their first fully successful character based musical number, then “Under the Sea” is the first of the other kind of musical number, the showstopper, the big number that gets a whole group singing together – think “June is Bustin’ Out All Over” from Carousel or, from later Disney movies, “Prince Ali” or “Zero to Hero”. This is a hard one to pull off, as it’s easy to end up with a bloated and self-indulgent sequence that lasts too long, or a showy but ultimately empty number which uses a lot of characters and bluster to disguise the fact that it really has nothing to do with the story and is just killing time, but Disney’s unique combination of being able to create impossible visuals and not make transitions into song seem awkward through the use of animation and having a traditionally short run time and thus having to trim down every scene as much as possible is what allowed it to strike gold in a way that no-one else really has before or since. “Under the Sea” manages to both be big and bombastic, but also brief and humble, it does not directly service the plot and is mostly there to be a fun song, but it does tie into the themes and atmosphere of the movie and its characters and doesn’t feel like a musical number just for a musical number’s sake, it feels intrinsically tied to the nature of the film and not superfluous in any way. Add to that an insanely catchy tune and at last, a true realisation of that clever and playful use of rhyme that we saw the early seeds of so long ago in “When I See an Elephant Fly” and “Bare Necessities”; finally, those seeds have sprouted and grown strong with the nourishment of Ashman’s wonderful lyricism, how can you not love ‘while we devotin’ full time to floatin’’ or ‘when the sardine begin the beguine’? On top of that the animation and editing are just fantastic and this all culminates into the first truly perfect Disney song and one of the best in their entire catalogue – the songs in The Little Mermaid, particularly “Under the Sea”, set the benchmark for what Disney musical numbers should be like and the next few films took that and ran with it, filling the Disney Renaissance with some of the company’s absolute greatest musical scores as they finally realised their potential and truly redefined what it means to be a musical.

‘Sebastian, that’s your solution to everything, to move under the sea. It’s not gonna happen.’

‘Not with that attitude.’

The Little Mermaid definitely does have its problems – the central premise and main characters are just a little too ingrained in the old fashioned Disney prince and princess format, leading to some uncomfortable implications in regards to gender and unrealistic expectations from relationships that do bother me a little; still, I understand that this is a personal thing and that most people probably aren’t really bothered by it, it just kind of hampers my enjoyment of the movie a bit. Everything else in the movie is still really good, the animation, the backgrounds and especially the songs, which breathe new life into the Disney musical style and put the company on a path towards even greater ones in the future. Despite its problems, The Little Mermaid is undeniably a turning point in the history of not just Disney animation, but animation in general, kicking off what would come to be the greatest run of films in Disney’s long history and still being a really good film in its own right.

Other Thoughts

• New candidate for the most amazing shot in film history

It looks like a scene from Looney Tunes look at his eyes this guy is mental

7.5/10

Next Week: The Rescuers Down Under!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

27. Oliver and Company (1988)

I’ll say this right now, I don’t like Oliver Twist. It has a couple of cool things in it, namely Fagin and Bill Sikes, but the rest of it is a real bore to me. With that said, Oliver and Company often gets flak for being a rather lazy and slipshod adaptation of Oliver Twist, which, admittedly, it is, but perhaps this bothers me a little less considering I have such little interest in the original and its myriad of other adaptations, or in whether or not they did it better. Oliver and Company is not a great movie, but I think it removes enough of the boring aspects from Oliver Twist and replaces them with some fun and colourful parts – even if they are a little shallow – to still be a fun ride.

The animation is good, but not great, it’s on a similar kind of level to The Great Mouse Detective but not quite as detailed; as is often the case, a couple characters are better animated than the rest of the cast  – Fagin is very exaggerated and extreme with his movements, allowing the animators to play around a lot with the way he poses and interacts with things, while Sikes is the opposite, being very slow and methodical with his movements, yet still leaving a powerful impression; the animators definitely have the most fun with these two. Some of the animals are very well animated too, Dodger and Georgette in particular, with Dodger’s loose and slippery animation matching his relaxed and carefree attitude and Georgette’s sudden and jerking movements matching her uptight and somewhat unhinged mentality. The film does stumble when it comes to computer animation, though, which it uses extensively to animate vehicles in open and brightly lit scenes, making it much harder to hide than in the dark, claustrophobic clock tower scenes in The Great Mouse Detective; unfortunately, the technology just isn’t there yet, leaving the computer animation looking awkward and dated, often resembling the characters from the Money for Nothing video more than real cars. The character designs are actually really interesting, they look quite different from most other Disney characters, being rather more stylised and exaggerated – some characters, such as Fagin and many of the background characters are actually quite dirty and visually unappealing in their designs; though there are still generic Disney designs in Oliver and Jenny, for the most part the cast looks a little different here, which is nice to see. The backgrounds are very sketchy and unrefined, resembling those from One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but I think this fits the modern, 80’s New York vibe the film is trying to create; all in all, the visual style of the film is pretty solid, despite a few hiccups with the computer animation.

Dave’s not here, man

The plot is very familiar, being based on a classic novel that we’ve seen adapted many times before, though obviously the film deviates heavily from the original story, in traditional Disney fashion. That said, I think Oliver and Company actually kind of benefits from being such a stripped down version of Oliver Twist, as it means it can cut out a lot of the boring parts of the story while still keeping the general idea, as well as some of the better parts – while Fagin’s character is very diluted and made a lot more sympathetic and family friendly, Sikes is still pretty much just as monstrous and cruel, even though some of his nastier actions (namely, beating a woman to death and trying to do the same to his dog) are missing, it is a kid’s movie, after all. This means the film is paced reasonably well, it jumps from scene to scene, with something new always going on, never getting bogged down by story or wasting time with pointless scenes, it manages to stay entertaining all the way through. Still, this fast pace does mean that the film never really settles on one particular central plot, you’d think the focus would be the same as the original novel – Oliver’s plight and his rise from rags to riches –and it kind of is, but he as a character is so out of focus that it’s kind of hard to view the film as his story. Really, it’s not so much “Oliver” but more the “and company” that is the focus of the film, as it also the dog’s story, their quest to save Oliver and Fagin, it’s Fagin’s story, his attempts to save himself from Sikes as well as redeem himself for being a thief and a cheat, Georgette’s in her attempts to initially get rid of and eventually, accept Oliver and his friends and Jenny’s and her quest to rescue Oliver and her dreams of being reunited with her family. There are all sorts of storylines going on at the same time and the film never really settles on one and while this does stop things from ever getting too stagnant, it also prevents the film from really having a sense of purpose, it’s just too scattered and fragmented.

The film has quite a big cast of characters, most of which get at least a decent degree of focus and screen time, with only a couple (Rita and Einstein) falling by the wayside. This is good, because Oliver has got to be one of the most boring and least developed protagonists in any Disney movie, he has no personality beyond being sweet and innocent, he barely talks or does anything at all, he just gets passed around from character to character and situation to situation, he is completely passive and just there to watch the other characters do their thing. Thankfully, like I said before, the focus is much more on the “and company” part of the title, meaning that the large cast of colourful characters take centre stage and dominate the film over Oliver – Fagin’s gang of dogs are a very generic collection of stereotypes, they’re all likeable, but also very familiar. Francis is overly posh and sophisticated, Einstein is dumb but loyal, Rita is... just the girl, she really doesn’t get much time at all. Tito gets a bit more time and attention, he is scrappy, cocky and excitable, acting as the primary comic relief; he’s quite fun to watch at times, but by the end of the film his yippy attitude gets a bit old – there’s only so much Cheech Marin you can take and that’s all the character really is. Georgette also gets a decent amount of attention, she is enjoyably mean and snobbish and her extreme narcissism can be quite funny at times, she kind of reminds me of Angelica from Rugrats, though she does get nicer over the course of the film. As the leader of the group, Dodger appropriately gets the most time and rightly so, as he’s definitely the best member of the gang; he’s cool, witty, laid-back and just fun. Though a pretty shameful rehash of the “cool, streetwise drifter” character seen in Tramp, O’ Malley, Baloo and so on, Dodger is cool enough that you can give him a break; though you can also definitely tell that Billy Joel is voicing Dodger, as he never really transcends his role as just a singer in a recording booth, his exaggerated, “wise-guy” New York accent is so goofy you can’t help but enjoy it.

Sing us a song, you’re the piano dog

The human characters aren’t quite as good – Fagin is mostly just comic relief, he’s goofy and clumsy and pathetic, but I don’t really find him very funny or entertaining, personally, he’s just a little too sad. Jenny is a generic Disney kid, she’s nice and cute and she has a sympathetic backstory, but as usual, she is also boring; still, she’s not the focus of the movie and is not overly cutesy like Penny from The Rescuers or Michael from Peter Pan, so she’s not so bad. Winston isn’t in much of the film, but he’s generally likeable, he’s a little bumbling, but not nearly as much as Edgar from The Aristocats and he has some interesting quirks, like being really into wrestling, that set him apart from other goofy butler character types that have come before him. The best of the human characters is the villain, Sikes, who is dripping with villainous charisma; I really like this guy, he’s so slimy, but in a legitimately frightening way – Sikes is much more of a realistic Disney villain than we’re used to, he’s a ruthless loan shark with a sadistic streak, somebody you could very easily run into in real life, certainly in 1980’s New York. Sikes is definitely exaggerated and extreme, but he’s not really cartoonish and unrealistic and it’s this sense of realism that makes Sikes so threatening and dangerous, he’s not the most memorable or colourful Disney villain, no, but again, it makes sense for the kind of villain he is, I think he’s quite an underrated member of Disney’s rogues gallery; plus, he has an insanely violent death, driving straight into a speeding train and EXPLODING it’s crazy.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Oliver and Company is the fact that, for the first time in years, it’s actually a legitimate musical, rather than just having a bunch of ill-fitting songs played over the action, it has the characters actually sing and get involved in musical numbers and honestly, most of them are quite good. The opening song, “Once Upon a Time in New York City” is a bit goofy, it sounds more like the opening to Cheers or something than the intro to a musical, it’s definitely very 80’s and very cheesy, but that kind of adds to its charm, it’s a nice song. “Streets of Gold” is a good, soul-infused kind of song, but is unfortunately cut very short, we really don’t get to hear much of it. “Good Company” is a sweet, but very basic little song, both in terms of the music and the lyrics; it’s nice but really doesn’t have much going on. “Perfect isn’t Easy” is the most traditional musical number of the bunch and appropriately so, as it seems to act as kind of a parody of classic Disney musical numbers such as “Whistle While You Work” or “The Work Song”, with images such as little blue birds helping Georgette get dressed, while she brushes them aside and barely seems to notice they exist. The music is also pretty catchy and though the lyrics kind of emanate this feeling of thinking they’re wittier than they are, they are still rather well written; it’s a good song and probably the closest to a real musical number Disney had done in years, by this point. But the best of the songs as well as the best part of the entire movie is “Why Should I Worry”, which Billy Joel belts out in his classic style, it’s fun, super high energy and catchy as all hell; it’s not really a musical number so much as just a Billy Joel song sung by a dog version of Billy Joel but whatever it’s great, the whole thing is great, including the animation, it’s just a really, really good sequence. While some of the songs are a bit basic and Disney haven’t quite gotten back on track in terms of creating classic-style musicals, Oliver and Company was the closest they’d gotten in years and it’s got enough good songs to work.

Damn it feels good to be a gangster

I find it kind of difficult to sum up how I feel about Oliver and Company, while I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as a lot of people seem too, I do recognise that it’s not really that great either and while I do enjoy it quite a lot, it is so lacking in so many areas that I hesitate to really call it all that good. I think Oliver and Company is a film with a lot of personality, but not much heart, if that makes any sense; it has a unique style and attitude and some interesting character designs and ideas that no other Disney film so really has, but once you look beneath that fresh and intriguing surface, you’ll find there’s not much lying underneath – the story is too fragmented and the characters too shallow, despite a few stand outs. Oliver and Company is not much more than a kid’s movie, lacking in any real creativity, depth or thought, but I still think it’s a good kids movie, with some enjoyable characters, good animation and fun songs, even if it’s not much else.

6.5/10 

Next Week: The Little Mermaid!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

26. The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

If there was ever a truly underrated Disney classic, it’s got to be this – The Great Mouse Detective is a fun and exciting movie that seems to be sadly forgotten these days. This was my absolute favourite as a kid and, while that’s not the case anymore and I can certainly acknowledge its flaws, there remains a special place in my heart for Basil of Baker Street.

The animation is good, if not much else; the xerographic process is gone for good now and it’s nice to see a real return to Disney’s traditional style. Unfortunately, the animation is not quite as expressive and enjoyable as in The Fox and the Hound, but things still look good, some of the action sequences in particular are really great, especially the final battle at the clock tower, which features an early use of computer animation for Disney and some really great work on the primal and animalistic movements of Rattigan – I could never watch this bit as a kid I was so scared and by all means, he still looks pretty frightening, now. The character designs are good, if mostly a bit generic, Disney seem to have a tendency to use anthropomorphic cartoon mice quite a lot, but thankfully the ones here have a lot more personality and capacity for facial expressions than the very basic designs of the mice in Cinderella and The Rescuers. Ratigan stands out amongst the other characters as having a really great design, with a lot of nice little details that help reflect his character, you can tell just by looking at him that he’s a man (or a rat, whatever) who wants to be seen as civilised and upper-class, but clearly doesn’t fit the part, with his awkwardly parted hair and ill-fitting suit, which can barely contain his enormous, bestial frame. The backgrounds are good too, if a little too similar to ones from One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp, but that is a necessity of the setting and The Great Mouse Detective does inject a sense of originality by having the film be set entirely at night, dimly lit by lampposts and obscured by the infamous London fog, giving the film a mysterious, almost film noir look. Most of this animation isn’t exactly fantastic, but the film always looks good and the clock tower scene is certainly close to some of their best work.

A rat for all seasons

The central premise of the film is, of course, the question “What if Sherlock Holmes were a mouse?” Which has been interpreted and translated by Disney into “What if Sherlock Holmes were a mouse who got into some wacky, family friendly hijinks?” This means that, though the film is obviously based heavily on the mythology of Sherlock Holmes, it does things in its own way; most notably, the film isn’t really much of a mystery, as we are told quite early on who the culprit is and what his evil plan is and, though there are scenes of Basil looking for clues and making deductions, it is often rather simplistic. The film is more of a standard adventure story, as Basil and his associates chase after Ratigan, with some action packed sequences along the way; though I could see this being a disappointment to Sherlock Holmes fans, who would be more interested in a traditional mystery, you have to remember that this is a children’s movie, so I think the change in style and approach is appropriate and works well enough. Though the story is rather basic, it is at least clear and consistent and doesn’t waste time on pointless tangents or padding, it relies on a lot of set-pieces, rather than a clever mystery, but the set-pieces are all good, so there’s no real harm.

This simplistic story is thankfully kept afloat by the more interesting and enjoyable characters, particularly the two major ones. The side characters are just alright, Dawson is a very stereotypical Watson, he’s nervous and bumbling, but not stupid and can be astute when he needs to be, as well as always kind and polite. Olivia is an equally stereotypical cutesy Disney kid and this can get a little annoying, though she’s not nearly as obnoxious as other examples, such as Penny from The Rescuers or Michael from Peter Pan. Fidget the bat is really well animated, but his physical comedy gets a little tiresome; he kind of reminds me of one of the Gremlins, but not nearly as fun to watch. Olivia’s father doesn’t have much to do, but he’s voiced by Scrooge McDuck so that’s cool I guess; that’s about it really, there’s a dog and a cat but they don’t really do much or have a personality so whatever. Where the film really shines is with its hero and villain, as Basil and Ratigan are both really well defined and fun to watch characters, with a decent degree of depth for Disney characters at this point in the canon; don’t get me wrong, they’re by no means Shakespearean and they don’t get that much development, but they at least have layers to their personalities and different facets to their characters that aren’t all on the surface and most importantly, they’re just fun to watch.

One big happy family

Basil is thankfully quite a different Disney protagonist, while a good guy at heart, he is not perfectly kind and patient, he has a bit of an ego and can be selfish, after all, he is effectively, Sherlock Holmes; that said, Disney puts an interesting spin on this traditional character type and emphasises some Holmesian traits in Basil that we don’t see too frequently. Holmes is often portrayed as rather stern and arrogant and, in some more modern adaptations, troubled and emotionally unstable in his dependency on solving crimes and his inability or outright refusal to conform to social norms, at times seemingly taking a rather callous joy in his ability to deduce people’s secrets and embarrass them intellectually. Basil however, is focused around an aspect of Holmes that is often sadly ignored, namely, that he finds being a detective FUN. Basil is always moving around and talking, always active and energised, he just loves being a detective; though he is certainly a little too confident in himself and has little patience for Olivia, he is not rude or sadistic about things – this is best demonstrated in his first scene, when he bursts into his house, completely unperturbed  by the fact that two strangers are in his living room and proceeds to rush around, preparing tests and examinations, all the while performing his famous first deduction of Watson (or, Dawson here) as a military surgeon who just returned from Afghanistan. This tells you everything you need to know about Basil right away: he is a genius, but a little absent minded, he isn’t interested in conforming to social conventions, but not because he doesn’t care to be polite to people, he’s just so in love with what he does that he can get absorbed in it and not notice others.

Basil isn’t rude or dismissive or negative, he’s just always positive and having a good time and I love it, his enthusiasm is so infectious and it makes him really fun to watch. Basil also isn’t a perfect detective, making a few mistakes through the film and though he does show moments of brilliance, many of his “astounding” deductions are just common sense e.g. “The person who left this peg leg footprint must be a person with a peg leg!” He can also lose faith in his abilities and get rather melancholy, as well as losing his temper; this perhaps all suggests that Basil is not so much Sherlock Holmes if he were a mouse as he is a mouse who really, really WANTS to be Sherlock Holmes, an idea supported by the fact that Holmes does exist in this film and Basil lives in a mouse hole in his home of 221B Baker Street. Regardless, I find Basil to be a fun and refreshing interpretation of Holmes that brings a joy and passion to the character which is so often lost in the sea of snarky, spiteful, self-indulgent witticisms that sadly tend to populate modern interpretations of the character SHERLOCK IS NOT A GOOD SHOW okay I’m done, sorry. Basil’s great.

For our enjoyable hero we also have an enjoyable villain, the wonderfully hammy and somewhat flamboyant Ratigan, played very fittingly by the infinitely hammy and flamboyant Vincent Price. Like Basil, Ratigan seems to take so much joy in what he’s doing, he loves being a criminal and relishes his victories – just as Basil seems more interested in solving an interesting crime and defeating Ratigan than rescuing Olivia’s father, Ratigan seems more interested in besting Basil and proving his superiority than taking over the country. He also has some interesting, if unsubtle aspects to his character, such as his refusal to accept that he is a rat and his constant attempts to appear refined and civilised; he has a raging temper, but fights hard to hide it, so that others do not think of him as uncouth or thuggish. This is quite an interesting idea for a villain and it means that when Ratigan does finally lose control and give into his primal urges in the climax, fully succumbing to the side of him he has so desperately tried to hide, it is all the more powerful; in a more serious film, it might almost be tragic, though here of course it is mostly played for laughs. Though Ratigan is definitely cheesy and extreme, he goes so over the top that it’s hard not to enjoy how ridiculous he is, he and Basil have a really great dynamic; unfortunately, as said before, the film relies a little too much on action packed set-pieces, meaning these two great characters don’t get nearly as much time as they should, but the time they do get is very well spent indeed.

‘Alright Dawson, I’ll be the twink and you be the bear.’

The film has only a few songs, feeling a little like another Disney film that was forced to be a musical when it didn’t really need to be, but thankfully the songs aren’t bad and mostly work for what they are. Two of them are just standard songs that play in the background of scenes, so they don’t become intrusive or irritating; the film only has one standard musical number: “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind”. While it isn’t great, it’s still a fun song with a nice tune and some good, if not especially clever lyrics. Following a trend in the last few Disney films, the musical score is a lot better than the songs, with the main theme in particular being a great, jaunty, sweeping piece that effectively captures the classic spirit of adventure and intrigue of Sherlock Holmes, while injecting a level of animated joy and fun, much like the film itself, it really sums the movie up perfectly.

While The Great Mouse Detective doesn’t have many especially notable flaws, it doesn’t have much depth or creativity to it either, it’s a very fun movie, but admittedly not much else. Still, I don’t believe it was trying to be much else, or that it needed to be, it is an adventure movie that manages to have a basic, but solid and focused story, with some good action scenes, a great climax and a highly entertaining hero and villain, what more can you really ask for? I know the film isn’t perfect and I think I might be a little biased towards it, but I can’t help it, I just find Basil so fun and likeable; The Great Mouse Detective might not be a great film, but I find it really fun to watch and if you’ve never seen it or maybe just forgotten about it, I implore you to give it a try.


Other Thoughts:

• Some of the facial expressions and reactions of the characters are really funny in a subdued way. After Olivia shows Basil up by being better with his dog than he is, he gives her this great little look.

Not impressed

• Basil first appears in this really weird Chinese disguise and we NEVER find out why he was wearing it.

Okay now that’s not racist, that’s just funny

• No jokes about this one, this shot is just amazing.

7/10

Next Week: Oliver and Company!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

25. The Black Cauldron (1985)

If Disney’s popularity and financial success had already begun waning a little in the 70’s, then this is where they truly hit rock bottom – The Black Cauldron was a financial and critical disaster for Disney and suddenly, the possibility of shutting down the animation department entirely became very real. The Black Cauldron’s failure to perform at the box office is likely due to the fact that Disney tried to take things in a different direction here, with a much darker tone than previous efforts – indeed, it was the first of their films to receive a PG rating in the US. Though this new direction did not impress audiences or most critics and I agree that it doesn’t quite work perfectly, I have a certain admiration for this different approach and, while a lot of The Black Cauldron is rather average, it can at times be very fun.

Disney slipped back into use the xerography process of animation for one last time and while it’s disappointing to see them kind of take a step back from The Fox and The Hound, the animation in The Black Cauldron is good enough that you can rarely see the problems of the xerography style; the only time things really become a problem is with some of the close-ups of the Horned King and notably in the character of Fflewddur Flam, who bizarrely is the only character who frequently appears with scratchy outlines and rough animation. Otherwise, the animation is really quite good, it’s not some of Disney’s best and only rarely demonstrates their traditional passion and energy, but it’s fun to watch and there are some really creative and interesting things they can do with the film’s unique (for Disney anyway) dark fantasy setting. Appropriately for the film’s darker tone, the film also has a darker look, with less bright and vibrant colours and a sort of dark fog covering the environment at all times; the film is still relatively colourful, but it plays this down and uses a lot of darker shades to better suit the style of the film. The character designs are done in a traditional Disney style, if a little less exaggerated, again to fit the film’s more mature tone, they are most reminiscent of those from The Sword in the Stone – logically enough, considering they are both set in medieval fantasy worlds – but some characters, such as the Horned King and Creeper, are pretty unique and interesting in their design. The backgrounds are mostly very good, the forests are surprisingly bland for a Disney film – though again, this suits the film, as here the forest is a dark and dangerous place, not a beautiful, pastoral landscape – but areas like the Horned King’s castle and the mountains approaching it are very well drawn. These backgrounds are often reminiscent of Maleficent’s castle in the feeling of emptiness, ruin and death they create; the Horned King’s castle is large and full of people, yet it is does not feel alive, but rather an old, decrepit shell of its former self, full of cracked stone, torn banners, cobwebs and skeletons, it’s as if the royal castle from Sleeping Beauty had been abandoned for many years and left to rot. Though The Black Cauldron sometimes stumbles in its attempts to reach a darker feel, I think the visual style and animation is the one aspect of the film where it truly captures that feeling it was going for.

The story is clear and consistent from the start and never really goes off track or devolves into filler, which is pretty unique for a Disney film at this point in the canon; that’s not to say the story is great or anything and it’s rather simplistic really, just a very traditional hero’s journey, but it mostly works for what it is. Our hero Taran must take his psychic pig (yeah psychic pig) Hen Wen to a safe house, but when she is captured along the way he must break into the castle of the dreaded Horned King in order to save her; finally, after escaping the castle, Taran and his new friends embark on a quest to find and destroy the Black Cauldron before the Horned King can use its powers for evil. It’s a standard, but enjoyable adventure with a logical plot line that runs all the way through; there’s not much to say about it really, there aren’t really any problems with pacing, or with character motivations or conflict, it’s just a perfectly good story. Again, it’s hardly unique, the whole film definitely feels very much like a fantasy movie from the 80’s, as this was a familiar style at the time – The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, it seems like everyone was trying to create a dark fantasy adventure and The Black Cauldron definitely fits that mould, but it is original enough in some of its interesting and surreal ideas, such as aforementioned psychic pig, that it works well on its own.

That’ll do, pig

Unfortunately, the big problem with the movie is its characters, they’re not even necessarily bad or irritating – for the most part – so much as just hollow and underutilised and though the adventure story is fun, it isn’t detailed or complex enough to hold up the film on its own, it’s the kind of story that needs to revolve around its characters, not the other way around and these rather weak and underwritten characters just cannot support the plot, leaving the whole thing to kind of come crashing down around them. As a hero, Taran is a bore, he is a character completely defined by his physical actions, rather than by his personality, intelligence or dialogue, his best moments come when he just swings around his sword laughing, which kind of says all you need to know about how interesting he is. While it is refreshing to have a Disney hero who isn’t just squeaky clean, nice and perfect, as Taran is unsatisfied, arrogant and bull-headed, he is also a little too much of these things – his overconfidence frequently causes him and others trouble and his constant whining and complaining gets annoying very fast, making Taran just come off as a bit of a twerp. While Taran does eventually become more mature and reasonable later in the film and it’s good to see some character development, this has the unfortunate side effect of turning him into that very same boring, perfect hero archetype he seemed to be avoiding; not only that, but the character development doesn’t really seem earned or natural, he’s a cocky little moaner for the first half, then he has a fight with Eilonwy, then suddenly he’s just nice and humble for the rest of the film, the sudden shift in his character doesn’t really make sense. 

Princess Eilonwy is a little better, initially anyway, she is first introduced breaking Taran out of prison, showing a surprising amount of agency and headstrong determination for a Disney princess and is also willing to call Taran out when he’s getting too full of himself, quick to remind him that she saved him and not the other way around. Sadly she quickly devolves into just Taran’s love interest and, while she doesn’t become a standard damsel in distress for him to rescue, she doesn't really do much else for the rest of the film but exclaim ‘Oh, Taran!’ when something goes wrong. Fflewddur the bard is just kind of annoying, I don’t really get why he’s there, I guess for comic relief but that role is filled rather effectively by other characters and he never really does anything else important except chew out the witches at the end so I don’t really see his purpose, he just seems like kind of a waste. Gurgi is a serious contender for the Hooter of the movie – he’s small and furry and cuddly, overly cutesy and cartoony, with a silly voice and a weird way of speaking, which draws forth comparisons with the awful mice from Cinderella, he’s very clearly supposed to be the big breakout character of the film that the audience is supposed to fall in love with so Disney can sell lunchboxes and backpacks with him on it and he’s a goofball who often gets into trouble and doesn’t do anything to help his friends, running away at the first sign of danger. He’s kind of like a combination between Gollum and Jar Jar Binks; still, he’s not nearly as obnoxious as I remember him being and he does redeem himself at the end of the film, so I guess he’s not too bad really, just a bit of a pain.

‘Meesa’s precious...’

The villains are very typical villains, but have somewhat of a new spin on classic archetypes – The Horned King has a very dark and almost grotesque design and is well voiced by the great John Hurt, who brings a great sense of age and patience to the character; the Horned King has no real motivation or personality quirks, he’s just evil personified and while this isn’t done as effectively as with the Evil Queen or Maleficent, he’s still enjoyably villainous and appropriately dark and has a wonderfully gruesome death scene where his skin melts away as he sucked into the Black Cauldron. Creeper is a pretty standard evil sidekick type in the vein of Smee or Sir Hiss, but his physical comedy is taken to a much more darkly humorous level with just the sheer amount of brutality he suffers and he is a lot more resentful towards his master than previous incarnations of this character; he is also probably the best animated character in the movie, with a lot of energy and exaggerated movements and a great deal of care and attention put into his animation. There are other characters, such as the fairies/pixies/whatever, Taran’s master Dallben and the Witches, but there’s not much to really say about them; the worst thing about the characters in this movie is that, unlike say, The Aristocats or The Rescuers, the problem isn’t that they’re bland or uninteresting, as they mostly have pretty strong and defined personalities, they just aren’t given the time to show them enough, with Princess Eilonwy and Taran particularly suffering in that they both break the mould a little in terms of traditional Disney heroes and heroines and they have an interesting dynamic set up, but it never really goes anywhere. The film is bigger on spectacle and set-pieces than it is on story and substance and while this does lead to a few very good scenes, such as Hen Wen’s abduction and the escape from the castle, it means that too many other scenes are only average, because the substance and heart just isn’t there.

Continuing the trend of doing things differently, The Black Cauldron is the very first film in the Disney animated canon that isn’t a musical, there are NO songs here. This is relieving but also surpising, because as we’ve seen already, Disney had a tendency to shove songs in where they absolutely did not need to be, just because people expected them to make musicals, as that’s what they were originally known for; this was especially egregious in films such as The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, where the songs aren’t even presented in a traditional musical format and are just sung over the animation, feeling completely separate to the movie and totally unnecessary. This would not have worked in The Black Cauldron at all and thankfully Disney realised that, not sullying the more dark and serious tone of the film with ill-fitting and unnecessary songs; it was also pretty clear that Disney was either getting tired of doing musicals or seriously running out of ideas on how to write effective and relevant songs, so it’s nice to see them take a break and try to regroup creatively. The lack of songs in this film is more than made up for with the great musical score, which perfectly captures the sweeping sense of adventure and the dark mystery of the film’s setting; the Horned King’s theme is especially cool, even though it’s basically just re-purposed from one of the composer, Elmer Bernstein’s, pieces from Ghostbusters the year earlier.

‘Oh what a world, what a world...’

The Black Cauldron is, if nothing else, a fun adventure flick, it tried something new and, while it didn’t entirely succeed, I applaud its effort and relatively success; there really isn't anything else like it among the other Disney films, with its generally darker and more serious tone and style, effectively captured through the animation and musical score. Still, while it is darker than most of their other films, Disney don’t really quite go all the way with the darker tone, leaving the film feeling a little unfulfilled. The characters also really drag the movie down, they just aren’t given enough time for you to really care about them or get invested in their struggle and though the story is solid and well thought out, without interesting characters to drive it, it just falls apart. Though these aren’t the biggest problems and on the face of it, The Black Cauldron still seems to be much better constructed than a lot of other Disney movies, there just seems to be something missing from it; maybe the characters really do hold it back too much, maybe that attempt at a darker tone stops it from capturing any of that Disney magic, I don’t know, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something just isn’t there. Nevertheless, I admire Disney’s intentions, I’ll always respect when they try to do something different and stumble more than when they try to do the same old thing and just can’t match the first time they did it COUGH Cinderella COUGH. The Black Cauldron is fresh and different and while it does do some things really well, it just doesn’t do quite enough well to be considered anything more than quite good.



Other Thoughts:

• The credits look very nice indeed.

‘Oh boy, master, can meesa live here with you?’

‘Haha, not on your life Gurgi you little shit’

6/10

Next Week: The Great Mouse Detective!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds