First shot of animation: camera pushes into a foggy street in Victorian London

I spent the first half thinking it looked more like top-shelf tv animation than feature animation, something about the character designs and how they move. It might be because the budget and timeline both got cut in half during production. It might be because the new generation at WDAS set the standard now for what cartoons would do in my upcoming childhood.

This is the rare plot-driven Disney movie, an effect of doing a Holmes pastiche. They hit the highlights, quoting directly from A Study in Scarlet at the top, a Reichenbach Fall moment at the end, with Basil Rathbone archive audio in between. This might have been better as a tv show, a manic mouse take on Holmes going through the stories adapted to funny talking animals.

The end is miles ahead of the rest of the film. As soon as the hot air balloon comes out this is the real shit. The clock tower is remembered as an early use of computer animation, but it should be remembered for the dynamic and thrilling perspective shifts the tech enabled. And Ratigan going feral on top of it, fantastic. You get real good reviews by being 3/4 decent and 1/4 phenomenal, as long as that’s what you leave the audience on.