The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and then, of course, Aladdin and The Lion King are the four films most generally credited with kick-starting the animation revolution of the end of the 20th century, and opening audiences’ minds to the possibilities of animated films being more than just lip-service “family entertainment,” but instead robust, breathtaking and fully sketched tales full of vim and verve that capture and charm adults just as easily as children.

I’ll always have a soft spot for some of the even earlier animated films, though, chief amongst them The Great Mouse Detective, a winning adventure that grafts the rapscallion spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation
into a richly animated, Sherlock Holmsian tale set in Victorian-era
London’s underground mouse kingdom. In an age before DVDs, my parents either bought the over-priced VHS tape or ripped it off HBO during one of those free preview months we occasionally took advantage of, ostensibly for the enjoyment of my younger sibling. I’m man enough to now admit it, however — I believe I fired it up a time or two on a sick day home from school, or “submitted” to it with my sister.

And why not? Inspired by the adventures of Doyle’s brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, and based on Eve Titus’ engaging book Basil of Baker Street, The Great Mouse Detective is a smartly sketched blend of comedy, action, adolescent drama and mystery which marks the directing debut of now legendary filmmakers Ron Clements and
John Musker, important creative forces behind such Disney animated blockbusters as The
Princess and the Frog, as well as the aforementioned The
Little Mermaid and Aladdin.

The plot provides youngsters with both a sympathetic surrogate and a hiss-worthy villain, not to mention some properly modulated intrigue. When talented toymaker Hiram Flaversham is mousenapped, his winsome daughter Olivia turns to the most famous mouse detective of them all, Basil of Baker Street (above right). Buoyed by imaginative gadgets and disguises, and accompanied by his assistant and confidante, Dr. David Q. Dawson, Basil uncovers a villainous plot spearheaded by a slimy, contemptible sewer rat, Dr. Ratigan, to replace Moustoria, Queen of the Mice, with a look-alike robot that will leave him free to take control of the entire rodent population of London. As Basil sniffs out one clue after another with unmatched ingenuity, he leads little Olivia closer and closer to a reunion with her beloved father.

The animation, naturally, doesn’t provide the same depth-of-field wow factor to which we are now accustomed, but what drew me in and always impressed me with the movie as a kid was its characters, and they hold up remarkably. There’s warmth and vibrancy to the vocal performances, and though there’s a trio of musical numbers, they don’t overwhelm the production, which is a sometimes under-addressed minority report complaint of later Disney animated films, which got locked into a rigidity of formula that didn’t always best serve the story. Overall, there’s plenty to delight kids and adults alike in this charmingly
downsized slice of Victorian adventure and suspense. One may think it tough, to wind back the technological clock so after kids have experienced Toy Story and Shrek and Monsters Vs. Aliens. But if you have youngsters, give it a try — I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, this “Mystery in the Mist” special edition DVD release of The Great Mouse Detective tweaks its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio; instead, both full screen and 1.78:1 widescreen versions are available here, along with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, French and Spanish, as well as optional English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles. Viewers can test their own powers of deduction and go behind the scenes
of the movie with a nice variety of bonus features that include a solid making-of featurette that also roots the material in the real-life history of Scotland Yard, a sing-along version “The World’s Greatest
Criminal Mind,” and an animated look at the history of detective work,
complete with a crime-solving puzzle for the entire family. So if you’re interested in the history of where the word sleuth comes from, you’ll have your answer. There’s also a clutch of promotional trailers for programming featuring the Sprouse twins, as well as other Disney titles. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Being John Malkovich really opened the door for all sorts of meta-concepts, comedic and otherwise, but among its most unlikely spawn would have to be Bollywood Hero, a sprawling, dance-infused dramedy in which Chris Kattan, playing himself as fed up with being a Hollywood has-been and bit player, trips to India in order to land a romantic lead role. Perhaps even more unlikely is just how robustly this fanciful project connects, with crisp production value, humorous writing and engaging performances all around.

Bollywood Hero first unfolded on the small screen on IFC, as part of a three-part comedy event — shorter than a miniseries, but longer than your typical movie. It retains that structure here, its trio of 56-minute episodes each playable separately, and containing brief introductory recaps. The story opens in Los Angeles, with Kattan unhappily locked into a starring role on a science-fiction TV show. His agent is unable to provide any traction with respect to leading man roles, but Kattan fortuitously stumbles across Monty (Ali Fazal), a second-generation Indian filmmaker who happens to have an opening in his projected Bollywood epic Peculiar Dancing Boy, which he bills as “a serious critique of the caste system as told through the medium of dance.”

Monty pitches Kattan, who eventually comes around to the idea. Soon he’s on a plane, and then in India, but before production can even begin Kattan causes a national uproar by planting a very public kiss on his leading lady, Lalima (Neha Dhupia), a bankable starlet around whom the entire production is built. While Kattan is literally burned in effigy in the streets (!), Monty’s headstrong producer sister Priya (Pooja Kumar) tries to wheel and deal, while Monty also puts up his late father’s expansive studio as collateral to bring together the necessary final financing. With his own career and sanity hanging in the balance, not to mention Monty and Priya’s livelihoods too, Kattan throws himself into learning (at least some of) a nation’s customs and rituals, cinematically if nothing else. Adding flavor to the proceedings are Julian Sands as Reg Hunt, an intellectual, Jeremy Irons-type British costar of Kattan, plus Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge (a former real-life girlfriend of Kattan’s), Andy Samberg, Keanu Reeves and David Alan Grier, all playing themselves in cameos.

Benjamin Brand’s script offers up a nice balancing act, neither trading in bland generalities nor lacquering on the specificity so grandly that it conflates Kattan’s problems with capital-I important issues. It takes the piss out of Kattan, in other words (there’s some good-natured fun had at the expense of Corky Romano), but lightly and lovingly so, basically allowing Kattan to play-act what one presumes is an only slightly canted and elevated version of his own anxieties and frustrations as a performer.

Director Bill Bennett, meanwhile, gives the movie real heart and soul, as well as a unifying production design. The film isn’t expansive or overly doting in its ritualistic homage to Bollywood cinema; there’s definitely a cant and concession made for Western audiences, from the original “in” of the narrative hook to the tone of the humor. But I’ll say this — Bollywood Hero is gorgeously shot, and sincere and tonally consistent throughout. It isn’t cheap with its jokes, and it doesn’t careen wildly from one set piece to another. There’s a trajectory for Kattan, and the supporting characters as well. And through it all, Kattan delivers an engaging and surprisingly emotionally resonant performance. His timbre of his voice — at times somewhat tremulous — works against his stated desire to be taken seriously, but that’s part of the joke, too, and the third act path the film carves, all part of Kattan’s unlikely redemption.

Housed in a white, regular plastic Amaray case, Bollywood Hero comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English subtitles. Apart from its aforementioned chapter selection, the only supplemental bonus feature comes by way of eight minutes of additional excised material, including an extra dance scene and a mock condom commercial starring Kattan. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)

The violations and indignities that the written word suffers in Hollywood are many and sundry, but screenwriters get their say in Tales from the Script, a highly interesting documentary built around wide-ranging conversations with almost four dozen big screen storytellers, from John Carpenter and Frank Darabont to Bruce Joel Rubin and William Goldman. Eschewing voiceover narration or some artificially manufactured chronological narrative structure, the movie instead more or less embraces chaos theory that conventional mainstream narrative storytelling rejects, thematically grouping its anecdotal insights in ultra-loose fashion with title cards.

Yes, Tales from the Script is exclusively a talking-head affair, which lends it the feel of a cultured curio — a selling point, to be sure, for cineastes, but something of a hurdle for general audiences. (There’s also a hefty companion book to the film, underscoring a certain academic worth.) A lot of the observations herein are pointed but somewhat generic. Steven de Souza (above) amusingly and perceptively notes that there are people in the room during a story meeting who basically make their day, work-wise, by offering comment on your script, so such an environment encourages even dumb, from-the-hip remarks over more thoughtful silence.

Some stories, however, are pure, unadulterated gold, like Guinevere Turner hilariously recounting her work experience with director Uwe Boll on BloodRayne, Darabont talking about being offered a $30 million budget for shooting The Mist with a different ending, and Rubin ruefully recalling a Disney executive taking him to lunch and surreptitiously picking his brain for ideas for Armageddon by just letting Rubin talk about his work on Deep Impact. Director Peter Hanson and co-producer/co-writer Paul Robert Herman are also smart enough to include in the mix a number of writers laboring chiefly in the straight-to-video realm, which helps keep Tales from the Script grounded in reality. Too much focus on only pie-in-the-sky top-shelf Hollywood product would make the risk-reward somehow seem more palatable, or like less of a long-shot. While it could use a bit more insights from independent writer-director-producers, as is the movie comes across as an accurate, unblinking and certainly engaging look at the balancing act between art and commerce that is screenwriting, and moviemaking in general.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Tales from the Script comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio mix. Bonus features are ample, kick-started by 46 minutes of additional interview footage that is, unsurprisingly, entertaining as all get-out. Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Breach) shares his own metaphor of Hollywood’s fickle embrace, relating an anecdote about Christmas gifts spread out over a couple years. Ron Shelton compares a script to sheet music, but says that it unfortunately only gets played once; he then goes on to talk about Bull Durham being written in a single draft, with his film’s opening two-page monologue dictated into a microcassette recorder while driving the back roads of North Carolina. Other writers, too, weigh in on the delicate balance between money, hack-itude and narrative ownership. The aforementioned Rubin asserts that a writer is always the birth parent to a film, while a director is an interpreter, akin to a conductor. Shooter screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin, meanwhile, says he consciously alternates between being “an artist and a whore, because if I was just the former I’d be broke and if I was just the latter I’d be sad.”

In addition to a clutch of preview trailers for more First Run Features home video releases, other supplemental features include 12 minutes of peer genuflection at the altar of William Goldman (Darabont compares him to the funny-without-knowing-it uncle who has all the best stories), and nine minutes of advice for beginning screenwriters, most of which underscores the occupational frequency of rejection, and the necessary psychological fortitude one must have to continually endure it. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A (Disc)