The Rescuers Down Under

The animation here is superb. Some sequences actually prefigure the top-notch work of the still to come The Lion King. And Eva Gabor and Bob Newhart remain charming as ever as the leads Bianca and Bernard. Still, something is a bit off in this flick. There’s just a bit too much slapstick in the story, and the tone of the tale varies a bit too much, erratically spiking high and low from scene to scene. It all reveals a movie that’s trying just a touch too hard, like the filmmakers didn’t quite trust what they were working with. So while there are impressive moments that give this movie a familial resemblance to the classics to come—this piece was released between The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast—at this juncture the studio had almost but not quite found its footing. A solid, transitional step, but still just below the heights the studio would soon achieve.