This is a strange movie sometimes. Mostly one or two scenes feel like the rest of the movie had no idea they were there.
The opening scene tries to be strongly from Olivia’s point of view, so Fidget is super scary and everything is in shadow (although some of the coloring seems a bit off… but hey, the studio basically gave them a barebones budget because if this didn’t work they were shuttering the animation division) and so on, really intense and then a little girl calls out for her daddy.
Then the main theme music kicks in for the credits.
Which sounds like this.
Little bit off right?
You similarly have the furry stripper dance.
I mean no mistake, the characters in this are often silly, and Ratigan’s theatricality and Basil’s showmanship are absolutely part of the characters, but even those clash pretty badly with “let’s punctuate the little girl’s trauma with upbeat adventure music” and “bar dancing for fun and profit”.
The main bits are pretty good though. Good voice work, characters come across well, they respect the viewer’s intelligence with the investigation and clues (although to an extent you can tell this was an adaptation because of that part). Ratigan in some ways is a model for the villains of the Renaissance (Ursula in particular, not coincidentally the next film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements), although thanks to the magic of Vincent Price there’s a good argument to be made he’s a lot more enjoyable than his descendants. Not sure I’m sold there, but it’s certainly something to mull over.
I think the biggest flaw is mostly that aside from Ratigan’s flamboyance and Basil’s excitability everything else is merely functional. Nothing wrong… well aside from the two above mentioned scenes, although in isolation those are fine they just aren’t worked in very well. But it banks really hard that you’ll be entertained enough by two characters to invest in everything else going on. Which sure, it works, but it also holds the movie back to be sure.
Rating- 7/10
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