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.

The Rescuers

It has its charms. The songs, for instance, are notable improvements over previous works' musical interludes. The main characters are sweet and likable enough, though the villains and supporting cast are mostly forgettable. The plot, such as it is, doesn’t make much sense; it seems a bit too involved for what is otherwise just dingy, small-time crime. The script lays on the schmaltz pretty thick at times, and delivers more than a few weird tone shifts. The animation--always a key ingredient when we're talking Disney--varies significantly throughout the film and from aspect to aspect. Sometimes the drawings are very good; at other times the scenes or scene elements look amateurish. Put it all together and stir it up, and you get a fair representation of mid-century, mostly lost-years Disney studio output. It's not painful to watch, but it hardly measures up to what came (well) before and what was to come (in about 15 years).