No matter if you know this as The Great Mouse Detective or Basil The Great Mouse Detective, this is an awesome movie. Based on the classic children’s book, Basil of Baker Street, this is one of the best 80s movies that Disney made. Having watched this again recently, I am pleased to say that this is a movie that holds up very well.
How to Download The Great Mouse Detective
You can download or stream the film from a digital platform such as Disney+. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
I have a bit of a personal connection to The Great Mouse Detective, this was actually the second ever movie (the first being The Black Cauldron) that I saw in a theatre as a child. However, I do not feel that my love for the movie is purely nostalgia based as when I introduced this to my son a few years back, he loved it too.
In the movie, we have three lead heroes. We have Basil who is the Great Mouse Detective and bases many of his mannerisms on Sherlock Holmes which is a great deal of fun. I really do like Basil as a character and as I write this I have a Funko Pop figure of him on the shelf right behind me.
Basil is joined by a young girl called Olivia and an old mouse called Dawson who has just retired from the army. The whole “Dawson” thing is just one of a million nods to the classic Sherlock Holmes stories that you will get a kick out of in this movie. Now, our three main characters are brought together through tragedy.
The Great Mouse Detective Trailer
Our young heroine, Olivia is in trouble. On her birthday this evil little bat called Fidget busts into her party and kidnaps her father, the toy maker, Mr. Flaversham! Olivia is distraught and heads out to find Basil, but she ends up lost. Dawson finds her and takes her to Basil who at first is not willing to help!
That is until he finds out it was Fidget who kidnapped her dad! Fidget is a henchman of the despicable Ratigan and he has a rather genius master plan to become the ruler of Mousedom. Basil agrees to help Oliva and the three of them along with Toby who is the dog of Sherlock Holmes head out to try and track down Fidget who will lead them to Ratigan who will then have Olivia’s father!
This is such an awesome and fun movie. It is like a classic detective caper and it is a movie that I feel adults will enjoy just as much as children do. I love the voice cast here, I get a huge kick out of Vincent Price being the voice of Ratigan and little Olivia being Scottish is perhaps one of the most underrated cutest things Disney has ever done.
Some of the Disney stuff from the 80s has a bit of a darker look to it and that is certainly the case for Basil The Great Mouse Detective. However, due to the old-timey London setting, I think the darker colors Disney has used here are very fitting. However, I do also feel that this movie is darker in tone too. Disney tried to go darker with a few movies in the 80s and it has always been something I liked.
As I said earlier, I watched this again recently and can confirm that it still holds up very well. I really do wish Disney would stop messing around and get a 4K release of this out, but the Blu-Ray still looks good. The version on Disney Plus is not bad actually and not as dark as some other movies can be on there. No matter how you go about it, just make sure you watch this.
