An action-packed slog

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

It's old San Francisco and mice off sailing ships are enjoying their beers at the joints on the Barbary Coast. But hark! Cats come to shanghai them for China Clippers. Who will stop them, but Mighty Mouse, in exactly the same way he does in every MM cartoon.Well, not quite. There is one gag that I don't recall from elsewhere; Mighty Mouse zooms past the cats and ties them up with his speed lines -- the visual cue that he is moving so fast that persistence of vision shows him in several places at once. Otherwise it's enjoy the pretty pictures at the beginning, some good music (Philip Scheib's orchestra includes a very nice clarinet)m then it's off to the same old same old with the identical noises. I'm sure Paul Terry was happy at the numbers coming in from the theaters, but I can't imagine that his staff was, except on payday.