The Great Mouse Detective

The Great Mouse Detective (1986) takes place under the floorboards of Victorian London. A mouse detective named Basil lives beneath Sherlock Holmes's house and copies his methods. A case that begins with the abduction of a toymaker leads to Professor Ratigan's plan to seize the throne. Its place in Disney's history is technical. The finale inside Big Ben runs two minutes and uses computer generated imagery, making it the first Disney film to use computer animation extensively. Layout artist Mike Peraza drew on Hayao Miyazaki's The Castle of Cagliostro when proposing the new ending, and the sequence among the giant gears comes from there. Its commercial significance is greater still. The previous film, The Black Cauldron in 1985, had badly underperformed and the studio was questioning the future of its animation division. New chief executive Michael Eisner cut the budget from 24 million dollars to 14. The film took around 50 million worldwide, added 13.3 million more in a 1992 reissue, and that inexpensive success restored management's confidence in animation. This is the film that opened the way to the Disney Renaissance. Vincent Price voices Professor Ratigan. He barely needed asking, saying he would have been offended had anyone other than Disney requested it. Animator Glen Keane redesigned the character after hearing his voice, making him more imposing and more refined than originally conceived. It runs 74 minutes. Good for: short brisk Disney, Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and the history of animation. Less good for: the low budget shows in places; the movement is limited and the backgrounds are plain. The songs are weak. Everyone other than Ratigan is thin.