Mouse and the Motorcycle, The (DVD)

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Beverly Cleary deserved better.

I said that when I first saw the 1990 Churchill films production of "Ralph S. Mouse," and I'll say it again of their combined live-action and animation version of "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" (1986).

Beverly Cleary is a giant in the field of children's literature, and so I had great expectations when I approached these films in the Scholastic Video Collection--a name as storied as Cleary's.

These approximately 30-minute live-action/3-D animation films look older than their years, with some of the kids appearing as if they could have been extras in "The Wonder Years." And the animation? It would be euphemistic to say that it's a little rough.

Ralph and the other mice who inhabit an out-of-the-way hotel look like garage-sale cast-off toys, moth-eaten little buggers that seem a little pathetic. Like the old taxidermy mounts that you see at flea markets that make you wonder if they have fleas, these little fellows look emaciated and dusty, with hairs askew. They don't sit or move like mice, either. And when Ralph rides his motorcycle, the animation isn't nearly as fluid as we've seen in later mouse productions, like the Stuart Little movies. But, of course, that's comparing apples and oranges. "Stuart Little" was a big studio picture, and this was obviously a low-budget film, though the filmmakers did manage to snag Ray Walston ("My Favorite Martian") and John Byner. If you can get by the ratty look of the mice, there's still their voices, which sound like a awkward cross between Tweety and the Country Bears on helium. And when they use remote control mice for their animation trickery, it looks pretty much like a remote control mouse scooting along the floor.

John Matthews co-directed this with Ron Underwood and also had a hand in the animation. Based on Cleary's novel for young people, "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" begins when a family drives up to the ramshackle Mountain View Inn and put in for the night. It's not long before the family's boy (Philip Waller) is discovering mouse holes and making contact with the mice, especially one little talking fellow named Ralph. The boy has brought a number of toys which, by design, look to be from the Sixties. One is an ambulance; another, is a shiny red motorcycle that he zooms across the floor. It's the latter which captures the fancy of Ralph S. Mouse, who borrows it and has a grand adventure scooting this way and that.

I thought it looked as hokey as it did ratty, but my six-year-old daughter squealed in delight at some parts, and let out a "NO" when the hotel maid was vacuuming under the bed where Ralph and his bike were hiding out, or when a feline imported by the maid to eat "those nasty mice" has Ralph pinned under another piece of furniture, so there's still something about the story-even when rendered as clumsily as this-that speaks to children. That's more a testament to the power of Cleary's story, I think, than the Churchill crew's filmmaking talents.