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MOVIES THAT RUINED MY CHILDHOOD
BY HUNTER GATHERER
The Mouse and His Child is one of those movies I’ve had on tape forever, since back in the days when my parents were the kind of cheapos who would rent movies and record them so they never had to buy anything. We still have tons of these tapes, most of them with illegible handwritten labels on them, lining a massive shelf downstairs at my parents’ house. For all the volume involved though, I’ve never forgotten this movie and it remains a creepily-defining portion of my childhood.
Based on Russell Hoban’s novel of the same name, the movie focuses on the journey of a windup mouse toy, which is actually two mice, a father and a son, who are eternally stuck together, their little mouse hands preventing them from moving independently of one
another. An incest theme comes to mind, but that’s probably just me being gross. They begin their existence in the world’s most disturbing toyshop, and after finding they can’t move without being wound up through the use of the key jutting out of Poppa Mouse’s back, they become determined to be something more than mechanical Siamese twins. Their plans for this, as well as Son Mouse’s naive desire for a mother and sister figures in the form of a toy elephant and toy seal, are put on hold when they are pushed into the trash by an evil authoritarian clock (not kidding) and shoved out into an unfamiliar world. Much like rural Kansas girls looking for work in New York might get picked up by a suave pimp, the two are quickly opted into slavery by a casino-running rat named Manny, who uses discarded toys as slaves, and is easily my favorite villain of any animated movie, bar-none. Poppa and Son Mouse are saved by a psychic frog (again, not kidding) who helps them on their way as they try to reunite with the Elephant and the Seal while avoiding Manny.
Poppa Mouse and Son Mouse run into quite a few snags in their plan, which include a troupe of bird actors who require them to provide a visual metaphor for an existentialist play, getting dropped by a hawk into a lake inhabited by a turtle who ponders the nature of infinity by endlessly contemplating the label on a can of dog food, and an engineering-savvy muskrat who promises to make them self-winding in exchange for a particularly exploitative season of tree-chopping. After breaking entirely and getting fixed into individuals by Muskrat, the two reunite with the Seal and the Elephant, who were also banished from the toyshop by the clock, and work to bring around the fall of Manny, whose hubris as king of the dump has reached Sophoclean proportions.
I watched the movie again for the first time since I was about eight with a friend of mine about a year ago, and even granted that we were on a lot of speed at the time, this movie is still ultimately fucked up. I don’t mean to say it’s bad. It’s almost too good, actually. At the very least too good for children. I have no idea how I could have watched this as a child and been comfortable with the subject matter. The Mouse and His Child expounds on some heavy shit, ranging from the nature of the family to Marxist-tinged ideas on the debasement of the weak at the hands of the oligarchy to the struggle for individuality and love in a world consistently conspiring against those desires. What’s more troubling about this is that the film has been slagged by critics for dumbing down the philosophy of the book, which was also written, ostensibly, for children. I actually have to applaud the fact that the movie is challenging for children, since too much these days is just the same shit with a different title.
In the end, I’m convinced that the animation quality is probably what sold the movie in the first place: everything is drawn in an elaborately dark, flowing, and lush style. In fact, the main weakness of the film doesn’t lie with its story, themes, or artwork, but in the jarring but bland music. The Mouse and His Child would have been much better off without the terrible theme music, which includes such classics as the jazz inspired “Scat Rat” (if you can’t laugh at that one just based on the title you have never been near the internet) and the song sung over the tree-chopping sequence includes lines like “Beaver times tree equals fall.”
The Mouse and His Child will always hold a special place in my heart, I think, but I can’t see this film ever gaining its much-needed revival. I still liked it enough at nineteen to try and make a horrible sampled techno song out of it. Maybe I’m old but I don’t have the kind of faith needed to believe this would ever win out over such quality faire as, say, Alvin and the Chipmunks, which is probably because these kids today are total pussies who are afraid to get freaked the fuck out.