The Rescuers seems to be a film of many milestones – released the same year as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, it marked the end of the 70’s and with it, the end of Disney’s era of xerography animation. This also marked the end of the more overly comic style that had dominated Disney’s features since One Hundred and One Dalmatians, returning to a more serious and dramatic adventure. While all of these are admirable accomplishments and many agree that The Rescuers helped breathe new life into Disney, which was slowly becoming very stale and forgettable, I don’t quite agree; though it’s obvious that The Rescuers helped signal the start of a new era for Disney (though not a particularly successful one), when viewed on its own merits, it seems to me that the film knows the direction it wants to take things in, but doesn’t quite get there itself.
While still utilising the xerography technique, The Rescuers has all but done away with
that rough and scratchy style and mostly returned to the traditionally more
soft and rounded look of the earlier Disney films. While this is nice to see
again, there’s nothing else especially interesting about the animation, it’s
perfectly fine, but doesn’t really stand out much; a couple of things are
really well animated, particularly Madame Medusa and her pet alligators, but
for the most part things are a little dry. The same goes for the character
designs, while again, a couple of characters are well designed, most of them
are a bit boring – the mice in particular have a very dull and generic look and
don’t have much detail or personality to them and Penny’s is so typical she may
as well be wearing a big sign reading “I AM AN ORPHAN”. Even some of the better
designs are pretty derivative, Medusa has a lot of detail and character to her
design and animation, but she’s such an obvious retread of Cruella De Vil and
Madam Mim (Right down to the alliterative “M” name and being called Madam!)
that it’s hard to really get enthused about her; there’s even a scene when she’s
driving a car like mad and we zoom in on her face just like Cruella, it’s
pretty lazy. The backgrounds at least are very nice, detailed and drawn in an
almost surreal manner – the setting of the film really does look great, it’s
just a shame not much else really does.
She drives like cra- oh wait we’ve done this one
The premise for the story is actually quite interesting: a
group of mice from around the world who call themselves the Rescue Aid Society
send two of their agents, Bernard and Bianca, out on a mission to rescue an
orphan girl called Penny. The idea of the Rescue Aid Society is pretty
interesting and the few moments we get to see of their organisation are
probably the best parts of the movie; there are some clever gags like having
the founder be the mouse who pulled a thorn out of a lion’s paw, some fun
interactions between the different mice and the insight we get into how their
organisation works is quite fascinating. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really
focus on this and soon gets Bernard and Bianca out into the world, a shame,
because I think the film would’ve been a lot better if it went more into the
rules and history of the Rescue Aid Society and showed us a little more of how
it worked. The rest of the movie sounds like it should be pretty exciting too,
the mice end up in a swamp called the Devil’s Bayou where they have to rescue
Penny, who is being held captive on an abandoned river boat by the evil Madame
Medusa, who wants her to find a precious diamond called the Devil’s Eye. That’s
a really cool and interesting setting and indeed, as said before, the Devil’s
Bayou looks great – the mysterious swamp, the old riverboat, the cave where
Penny has to search for the diamond, they’re all very striking visuals and
create a strong and vivid atmosphere. On the face of it, this seems like a
really exciting story with some interesting and original ideas, but somehow, it
just isn’t as good in execution as it is in theory, the film is plagued by bad
pacing, poorly developed characters and a constant slew of dull and pointless
sequences.
The movie takes way too long to get started and wastes far
too much time setting up the story – Bernard and Bianca don’t reach the Devil’s
Bayou until over half an hour in and don’t meet Penny until an HOUR in;
considering the whole point of the story is supposed to be their rescue of
Penny, it’s pretty unbelievable that they meet her an hour into a film that is
only an hour and seventeen minutes long. This wouldn’t be as bad if Bernard and
Bianca’s adventures on the way to the Devil’s Bayou were exciting, if there was
significant reason why they take so long to get to Penny or if we saw more of
Penny’s struggles alongside them, but no. Much of the first half is taken up
with a kind of mystery story of Bernard and Bianca trying to find out where
Penny is; this is a perfectly good idea and could’ve made for a great build up
to an exciting climax, but the whole idea of the mystery is undermined by the
fact that the audience knows from minute one of the movie exactly where Penny is
and the clues are so easily spread out for Bernard and Bianca that they should
figure things out a lot faster than they do. A lot of time is wasted on the way
with pointless scenes like Bernard and Bianca deciding to cut through a zoo,
before turning back and going another way because Bernard sees a lion; while a
couple of these can be justified as developing or better introducing the
characters, many of them just seem to be lazy attempts at dragging the movie
out a little longer. The level of filler here is hardly egregious compared to Cinderella or The Aristocats, but there are still too many scenes that go
nowhere, add very little to the story and go on for far too long, as in Robin Hood, making it very difficult for
the film to hold you interest.
Right around this point in the original cut you’d be seeing
a naked woman in the window
(Seriously, look it up)
The characters are mostly pretty bland; Bernard and Bianca have
some personality and chemistry, but don’t really get much time or opportunity
to show it. Although Bianca is pretty much exactly the same character as
Duchess from The Aristocats, right
down to being voiced by Eva Gabor, you can forgive this as she was one of the
only good things about that movie and brings the same energy and spirit to this
one; Eva Gabor really is a very good voice actress, she brings so much life and
personality to the character, it really feels like the animated character is
the one saying the words and acting, rather than matching the words of some
person in a recording booth. Bernard is also quite well voiced by veteran
comedian Bob Newhart, who brings his classically nervous, stammering delivery
to the character and helps cement Bernard as an anxious everyman; these two
voices really are the perfect fit for the characters and really help shape
them. It’s also nice that they get to spend a whole movie together to build
their relationship and, while it doesn’t exactly develop prominently in the
foreground as effectively as Lady in the
Tramp, it is downplayed and subtle enough that it works and comes off as
believable, rather than in The Aristocats.
Sadly, the other characters don’t really have any of these good points – Penny is
the typical cutesy Disney kid, she can’t talk properly, she carries a stuffed
animal around etc. etc. The villains are fantastically generic, Medusa being,
as said before, a very obvious Cruella De Vil knockoff with a little Madam Mim
thrown in and her sidekick is... well a sidekick. He’s a goofy, incompetent henchman
there to engage in slapstick with his boss, he’s Smee, he’s Sir Hiss, he’s
Jasper and Horace the list goes on. The other animals are an equally derivative
collection of random townspeople, an old turtle, a plucky mole, a laid-back
rabbit, a lazy mouse, it’s the cast of Nottingham in Robin Hood, it’s the other animals in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, again, the list goes on. Though
there are a couple of standout characters such as the alligators, Brutus and
Nero and a dragonfly named Evinrude, it says a lot that these are the only
characters that don’t speak and yet they’re the only ones that are any fun; the
cast of this movie is just really lacking in personality.
The music is quite frankly, bizarre, the score is pretty
good and the main theme in particular is very nice, a dark tune that helps
solidify the dangerous and mysterious atmosphere of the swamp; however, the
songs are very odd. They are not traditional musical numbers, but aren’t really
little tunes or narrative songs, either, they’re all just kind of sad... I don’t
even know what to call them, maybe folk songs? They don’t sound like Disney
songs at all, they sound like Joni Mitchell songs, or maybe songs from some of
Don Bluth’s later, weaker films (Which I suppose makes sense, Don Bluth did
work on this movie). Either way, I don’t think they fit the style of the film
at all and as a result, they’re quite
distracting and, more importantly, just not very good.
‘Nero do you think ours and our master’s character designs
are just gonna be recycled to be a couple of eels and an octopus lady about 12
years down the line?’
‘You know Brutus, I’m starting to think you don’t really believe in this
project.’
Other Thoughts:
- 10 More Things You Definitely Never Knew About Disney: Bambi’s Mother AND Bambi are in this one guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG someone get Buzzfeed back on the phone I need to submit
my fourteen word, eighty gif theory piece on how The Rescuers, Bambi, Frozen and Pete’s Dragon all take place in the same universe!!!!!!!
- Also there’s a bird, he’s lame
Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
4.5/10
Next Week: The Fox and the Hound!
Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com
Twitter: @JSChilds
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