31 Movies of May, Day 19: The Great Mouse Detective

May 19th viewing: The Great Mouse Detective, chosen by my sense of childhood nostalgia

Year of Release: 1986

Directed by: Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, David Michener, and John Musker (Yes, that’s four directors! On one movie!)

Written by: There are ten credited writers on this movie, I’m not listing them all

Starring: Barrie Ingham, Val Bettin, Vincent Price, Susanne Pollatschek, Candy Candido, Eve Brenner, Alan Young, Diana Chesney

Accompanying Beverage of Choice: No Parking (American Pale Ale, 4.4% ABV), Sketchbook Brewing, Evanston, Illinois
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)

I know this movie isn’t an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. I know Basil of Baker Street is his own thing, albeit one clearly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. I know that in this very movie, the actual Sherlock Holmes shows up briefly as a separate character. Nonetheless, this is still the depiction of Sherlock Holmes that cemented in my mind as I was growing up, much like the fox from Disney’s Robin Hood is the definitive version of the character.

Flowing from that, the villain of The Great Mouse Detective, Professor Ratigan, is what I think of when I think of Sherlock Holmes’ major nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Which is weird, because when you really take a moment to think about Ratigan, he’s a pretty bizarre creation if he is indeed supposed to be a Moriarty stand-in.

Ratigan is at least a surface-level Moriarty type. He gets his own song labeling him the “world’s greatest criminal mind,” which is pretty standard Moriarty-type labeling. And of course, he has that professor title, though it’s unclear exactly what he’s a professor of, where he teaches, or where he obtained his PhD. But the character design feels like a strong deviation from the way Moriarty is traditionally depicted as a person of exceedingly average physical form, ranging from the the slender likes of George Zucco and Lionel Atwill in the Basil Rathbone films to the more modern takes of Jared Harris in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, or the Hot Priest himself, Andrew Scott, in the TV series Sherlock.

In contrast, Ratigan is a hulking monstrous figure, towering over every other character. The “rat” part of “Ratigan” is of particular contention, as Ratigan repeatedly rages over being labeled a rat instead of a mouse (I supposed mice are seen as more dignified?). He is designed so as to be very much as ugly as his soul, and as physically imposing as he is supposed to be mentally imposing. It’s made all the more odd when you take into account that Ratigan is voiced by Vincent Price, another figure known chiefly for manifesting intellectual terror, not so much for his own physical largesse.

I ultimately have to chalk this disconnect up to this being a kid’s movie. Black-and-while, clear cut villains are simpler for children to understand, and the youngest of viewers really need those visual signifiers of a slimy tail and steroidal bulk to quickly understand just how bad a dude Ratigan is supposed to be, and how much of a threat he is to our heroes. But even as an adult, I feel like Ratigan has some unintentional appeal that this disconnect creates. In a way, he’s a much better realized version of what The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was going for in its depiction of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (or, for that matter, Russell Crowe going for the same thing in The Mummy years later). Price’s voice work is a big part of that, as it’s fun to see him play a hulking brute for once in his career. It’s nice to see a film from your childhood take that kind of journey - changing as your understanding evolves, but still managing to satisfy every bit as well as when you were repeatedly pushing it into the VHS player when you were five.