The Black Cauldron (1985) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

My local library had two Disney movies from the 1980s, and I was curious to see if they still held up after 30 years.

The Great Mouse Detective I saw in the theaters when it first came out when I was 10 years old. I remember liking the commercials and the poster with the big dog -- I can just imagine someone in Disney marketing saying "let's focus on the big dog - no one wants to see a movie about rats and mice".  Funny how after almost 30 years I don't remember one thing about the movie at all - not even what the dog did.  I wish I could l say that all my memories came back to me after re-watching it last week, but they didn't. The beer drinking and the dancing French maid mice went way over my head. Maybe I fell asleep in the theater.  My favorite part was when the Sherlock mouse calculates a way of escaping from the mousetrap set up by Ratigan (Vincent Price). I also really liked the old-timey song that played during the escape, which I found out was co-written by Henry Mancini; I didn't appreciate his contribution to the film when I was 10.

Here's a neat blog post about this movie from  Classic Film and TV cafe https://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com/2021/09/great-mouse-detective-film-review.html

The other one I watched was The Black Cauldron. This was a first-time watch for me. Something about the movie back in 1985 didn't capture my interest, even if it was meant to be a "boy" movie instead of a "girl"/princess movie. Maybe it was the high-fantasy aspect. I was never a big fan of the genre; never got into Hobbit or Lord of the Rings either. But since those movies have been so popular as well as Game of Thrones. Cauldron might be big a hit if released today.

I enjoyed the movie, despite the corniness of some of the characters including the furry short guy, a real moocher if there ever was one, always looking for "munchies and crunchies" (food). I like how he redeems himself in the end. I also liked the main hero, a young pig farmer who has a magical pig that can predict the future.  And I liked the harp player who bickers with his harp. The princess was OK; she had some sort of floating, glowing glass ball or "bauble" that serves no purpose; I kept waiting for that thing to pay off but it never did. She also had her own theme music which sounded alot like one of the pieces from Ghostbusters. I then learned that Elmer Bernstein was the same composer for both movies. Many of the musical sounds in Black Cauldron sound like those in Ghostbusters, but that's not a negative thing.  The villain is pretty scary, too.