There was a time in the 80s where Disney was still putting out feature-length animated features yet most of them failed to catch on as instant classics. Many Disney fans are fond of them, but movies like 'Oliver & Company,' and 'The Black Cauldron' aren't exactly household names. Sandwiched between those two movies was another forgotten feature called 'The Great Mouse Detective.'

'The Black Cauldron' could be considered Disney's goth phase. It was a very dark movie considering the other titles in the Disney catalogue and it proved to be a failure at the box office. So, in order to distance them from the overly dark nature of 'Cauldron,' Disney went in the complete opposite direction for their next film, 'The Great Mouse Detective.' Disney reverted back to the happy-go-lucky type of storytelling that was used in earlier films like 'Robin Hood' and 'The Jungle Book.'

'The Great Mouse Detective' is Disney's take on Sherlock Holmes with their standard anthropomorphic characters. The movie is based on Eve Titus' "Basil of Baker Street" book series. Basil Rathbone (voiced by Barrie Ingham) is a mouse who lives beneath the world's most famous fictional detective. Basil emulates the great Holmes in curiosity, cleverness, and insanity, although there aren't too many tough puzzles for Basil to solve. After all, this is a movie aimed at kids so they need to be able to follow along with the mystery.

Basil is soon met by Dr. Watson's rodent doppelganger, Dr. David Q. Dawson (voiced by Val Bettin) and a little girl named Olivia (voiced by Susanne Pollatschek). Olivia's father, an expert toy-making mouse, has been kidnapped by the vicious fiend, Professor Ratigan (voiced by Vincent Price). Ratigan, like Moriarty, is Basil's nemesis. The two of them have been battling it out and Basil has yet to find a way to defeat his superior criminal mind.

I enjoy the light-heartedness of 'The Great Mouse Detective,' but it's easy to see why it never became a Disney classic. There are too many times where it feels more like a well-made Saturday morning cartoon, rather than a famed Disney animated feature. I get the same somewhat innocuous feeling watching it as I get whenever I catch an episode of 'Duck Tales.' It doesn't help that one of the characters is voiced by Alan Young, who also spent years voicing Scrooge McDuck.

It barrels through its plot relatively fast, only pausing for a few moments to give us a couple scenes that feel Holmes-esque, such as Basil and Dawson escaping an elaborate Rube Goldberg trap for example. The movie never really slows down to let us know who these characters really are. They're good enough revisions of Holmes and Watson, yet the movie seems to gloss over too much.

Like I said before, this is a movie aimed at children and was meant to be fairly easy-going following the turn to the animation dark side with 'Cauldron.' From beginning to end, 'The Great Mouse Detective' seems determined to remind Disney fans that they only tried going really dark for one movie and were now back to making happier stuff. Stuff that kids would enjoy but subsequently forget about moments later.

While I appreciate 'The Great Mouse Detective,' it isn't one of Disney's best efforts. It will always be considered a second-tier Disney title simply because it doesn't provide any real memorable scenes, characters, or songs. It's a decent movie, but overall it reflects the period of lackluster titles released by Disney in the early 80s before 'The Little Mermaid' came out.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

This Disney release comes in a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack. The 50GB disc is packaged alongside the DVD in a standard Disney keepcase. There is a slipcover provided with the same artwork as the case. Inside is a leaflet that contains a Disney Movie Reward code. The release is region free.