Review of The Rescuers (1977) by Brooks C — 11 Feb 2013

As an avid childhood fan of Disney, I can almost never forget the many varying impacts that his animated movies have left on me back then. While most retained the traditional fairy tale formula concerning princesses and their prince charming some went in different directions in hopes of capitalizing more on different dynamics within the animation realm. "Fantasia", "The Black Cauldron", "The Great Mouse Detective", and "Bambi" are some examples. The Rescuers is no exception to this category.

The Rescuers tends to capitalize more on the adventure aspects of animated children's entertainment, while adding more depth to its incorporation of familiar elements from the more traditional counterparts. Since it does go this route, one would have to expect some sacrifices made on this movie's part. The movie begins with an orphan girl named Penny who is being held on an abandoned crew boat by Madame Medusa and her bumbling accomplice, Mr. Snoops in the middle of the Devil's Bayou. Being forced to search for a valuable diamond called, "The Devil's Eye" for the greedy Madame Medusa, Penny's message in a bottle gets recovered by mice from the Rescue Aid Society. The charming Hungarian mouse, Bianca handpicks the lowly janitor, Bernard to help tackle this odyssey in response to the found request, handpicks lowly janitor, Bernard. While on the way, they befriend many locales in the swamp that decide to aid them on their quest in rescuing Penny, while foiling Madame Medusa's ambition to get rich.

Like a lot of Disney movies, The Rescuers doesn't fail at providing a keen sense of adventure. The movie uses the traditional formula of having coherent critters run daily lives parallel to the common folk, but discreetly interacting with a select few human witnesses. These characters are not just limited to being voices of reason for the traditional damsel in Disney movies, but are apart of a fully sophisticated, underground society whose sole purpose is to help those in need. In contrast to what viewers are used to seeing in these films, I loved how this world of coherent animals was given more development and more slice of life value parallel to the coexistence of humans and the growing relationship between the two main characters was also a very nice touch.

The production quality for this movie is very high. The character designs are wonderfully done and the animation is very crisp. One of the supervising animators, Don Bluth is no stranger to wonderfully crisp animation with an immense amount of feeling. He would later go on to become an independent entity and incorporate this feature in many of his early classic works. Every character is expertly designed and voice acted in accordance to their personalities. Every character embodies a unique charm and perhaps the most charming is Eva Gabor as Bianca.

The soundtrack to this movie is also very well done and every track is well played with every scene. Like the aforementioned movies, The Rescuers is one of those few Disney classics that have very little to no musical numbers in place of story exposition and character development. This movie relies more on realistic, cinematic acting in accordance to its plot structure. The music number is presented in the beginning during Bernard and Bianca's first encounter and is kept within the confines of realistic occurrence. This only music number is played when the society is gathering for its annual meeting. One could think of it in the similar fashion of Ratigan's song from "The Great Mouse Detective".

Two complaints that I have with this movie are that I felt that the antagonist Madame Medusa felt a bit forced and underdeveloped. Contrary to the majority of Disney movies that always had fully developed and three-dimensional villains, Madame Medusa feels over-the-top most of the time and has little character aside from being greedy. For a movie of the Disney renaissance, The Rescuers does a good job for what it has to work with, but the story isn't something one will remember for years on end. Like I said, this movie does make some sacrifices in its effort to depart from the norm and capitalize on a different dynamic of animation. For the majority of these sorts of movies, it was those traditional aspects that made them memorable. This fact does help this movie, yet it also hurts it at the same time.

Despite this movie's faults in not being memorable and having a rather generically characterized villain, The Rescuers has very high production value. While it tries its hand in expanding its audience by focusing more on the adventure aspects, a few downsides do prevent this movie from reaching its true potential. The sequel, "The Rescuers: Down Under" did improve on the flaws of this movie and managed to successfully retain the same quality, despite it being released years later. Sadly, that movie has faded into obscurity from audiences and is doomed to the realms of the underrated. The Rescuers may not be the most memorable of Disney classics, but it is enjoyable once one is watching it. This fact and the high production value make this movie a worthy addition to any classic Disney fan's collection.