The Rescuers Down Under 1990
I never saw The Rescuers movies growing up, but lately I have been picking up a lot of Disney animated movies and both movies were included in one package, so this seemed like a good deal for a somewhat forgotten Disney classic. The first movie came out in 1977 and the sequel came out in 1990, just after The Little Mermaid and just before Beauty and the Beast, the beginning of a period called the Disney Renaissance. While the earlier Rescuers had kind of rough animation, The Rescuers Down Under has much cleaner more advanced animation with early use of computers to good effect for perspective and multi-plane animation. Visually it is pretty stunning with some great flying scenes, Australian landscapes, and some great stuff from the small perspective of mice. Unlike the other Renaissance movies, there are no songs, and instead this is mostly action and adventure with some comedy. Similar to the earlier Rescuers a kid is put in very real danger, maybe even more this time as the kid in question has knives thrown at him and is dangled as crocodile bait, which is kind of horrifying really, though (spoiler alert) the kid is not killed. The mouse characters are good again, and an albatross voiced by John Candy provides some comic relief but is a little overplayed. Because it is set in Australia, there are some very different types of animals, which is kind of fun, but the setup is very similar to the first movie including a villain who kidnaps and endangers a child and who has a large reptile sidekick. Ultimately the movie looks better than it plays, though it is too short to drag. Not Disney’s best work, but maybe a good example of what they were starting to get right, I will give it B.
Written: 15 Mar 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital