Basil, The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

When I was a kid discovering music, I would pinch my father's CDs that I liked the most.  My father listened to a lot of jazz and classical music, so that was where I started.  Henry Mancini made an impression on me.  I loved "Baby Elephant Walk" and "Pink Panther".  There was another song on the same album called "Main Title from The Great Mouse Detective".  Being a child, and therefore prone to come up with my own definitions for things, I thought it cool that a composer my father liked had written a piece of music about an imaginary mouse detective.  I thought it was just an idea that had occurred to Mancini one day; "Suppose there was this detective, but he was a mouse... I think his life would sound like this..."  After all, he'd written music about baby elephants and pink panthers, so for me it wasn't much of a stretch.  I loved the piece of music and was satisfied with my explanation for it.

Years later, I discovered the film Basil, The Great Mouse Detective at the video store.  It had animals in it, so of course I hired it.  When the opening credits started and the theme played, I froze.  I knew that music!  I scrabbled through my CDs to confirm that I was right, and sure enough, there it was on the track listing.  I'd been listening to it for years and never learned that it was the theme music for a Disney film before that day that I'd hired it on a whim.

After I'd watched the film, I pulled out my CD and listened carefully to the title music several times.  I heard it so differently having seen the film.  I could picture the characters and their world.  The piece seemed more emotive to me, knowing what it was created for.  This was a piece that was part of my discovery of music.  It wasn't something that I was told was good, it was a piece that I decided myself that I liked.  I had made that choice independent of outside influence.  I had listened to that album so many times growing up, I knew every little nuance of every track.  And then, out of the blue, completely unwittingly, I'd discovered a whole new meaning to a piece that I thought I knew so well.  It was an amazing experience to listen to a piece of music that I knew intimately, and hear it as though I was listening to it for the first time.  Because it gave me that feeling, this film will always be special to me.

Final Thought:  Hooray for mice with Scottish accents.

Up Next: Batman Begins (2005)