This is one of the strangest movies I've seen in a while, particularly for a character like Topo Gigio, a family friendly Italian mouse puppet who was a frequent act on the Ed Sullivan Show and on other TV shows around the world.
The puppetry and effects are as lively and nuanced as you'd expect, but it's clearly written by someone who doesn't know the character. He's known to be very witty and friendly, a traveler of the world, and to have a family and a love interest in a French mouse-ette named Rosie. Here instead, he is portrayed as a lonely, motherless outsider, frequently considering himself and his species as "lazy". He's forced into society one sleepless night by the rumblings of a group of men, who Topo discovers are armed robbers after a vault holding buttons to launch WMDs, in a bid for world domination.
It's a mouse-eye view of crime in Japan, painted in artistic yet dreary spotlights and silhouettes, a tone that is uncharacteristically dark for Topo Gigio. There are some funny bits here and there, and even a cute musical number or two, but there is also his relationship between a sentient balloon which ends in such a way that leaves one wondering whether to laugh or to cry at the whole thing.
Altogether a very fascinating oddity of family film.
