Review of The Rescuers Down Under (1990) by Wendy L — 28 May 2010

The Rescuers Down Under is what a child would consider a dream, and an adult would consider slamming their head into a wall to make sense of it.

The story involves primarily a young boy named Cody, a native to the outback with a penchant for (wait for it) being able to communicate with various animals (bet you saw that coming) kind of like an Australian Dr. Dolittle, and the main antagonist Percival McLeach (with his pet in crime, Joanne) who happens to be poacher after a very rare species of Eagle, and Codys going to do everything in his nine year old power to stop him. During this he gets kidnapped (rather easy I'm afraid) and is interrogated constantly by McLeach into finding out where the rare eagle is, because Cody knows. Also the supporting characters of Jake and Wilbur add into a likeable cast that round out the stereotypes (for example, Jake is the only character with an Aussie accent).

The visuals are a real treat, as if memory serves this was the flick Disney finally decided to take the plunge into Digital painting techniques and upping the ante when it comes to animated camera tricks. You can really tell alot of the scenes that seem useless when it comes to telling the story were there simply as eye candy, no doubt to flaunt the talents of the Disney staff at the time to grab attention from competitors.

The audio takes a bit of a backseat with only some decent yet unmemorable background music and no musical numbers (not even a villain song!), but that's the only flaw in it, the foley work and the voice acting are top notch with actors such as the late Eva Gabor, George C. Scott and the late John Candy (among others) contributing their talents to a great cast of characters established and otherwise.

Notice I've written about 4 paragraphs and haven't mentioned Bernard, Bianca, nor the RAS up to this point? Where the movie takes an overall dive in trying to throw eye candy at us, is skipping us out of more, possibly interesting and fulfilling, scenes of Bianca, Bernard, and Jake who are there to rescue Cody like their job is to entail. While the movie does a good job in showing us the misadventure of Jake trying to woo Bianca away from Bernard while trekking them through the outback, it would have been nice to replace the eye candy scenes with more scenes maybe telling us what's been going on with the two tagline characters and the Rescue Aid Society in the time inbetween when this movie takes place vs when the last one ended. This would have been a more than acceptable replacement of character growth instead if giving us more scenes of Cody and his animal friends (both the eagle who we see too much of, and the random cast of useless characters at McLeaches place whome we never see what happens to them past Codys inevitable rescue).

This is a minor quibble coming up, but it's always bothered me since I was a kid, maybe Bernard took some serious weight training in the absense between the movies, and this is where that previous storytelling idea might have come in handy for the beleivability of this, but world physics just don't apply to Bernard in the climax of the movie. [spoilers ahead, ye be warned!] There are scenes of Bernard (may I remind you who is a Mouse by the way) wrestling down a Razorback via it's snout horns, Bernard throwing sets of keys skyward, pulling a kid from freaking underwater, and tieing ropes to tree branches while battling a river current. But anytime before this seeming reality breaking adrenaline rush he seems to have gotten, was struggling with his tiny luggage and essetially being useless the entire trip!

What happened?

Despite any of the complaints, they're mostly just annoyances and to children, for the most part, just won't care. The pretty images and the character of McLeach will keep them captivated until the ending just in time to watch something else.

This still gets a 4/5 from me, maybe due to Nostalgia, it IS more fun to watch than the original, but I consider the original far more interesting and with a better story (and storytelling).

Recommended for casual watching fun with small children and infants with understanably short attention spans, or for someone who always dug the series, such as myself!

Now if you'll escuse me;.

Delegates! Hands over your hearts.

R-E-S-C-U-E,.

Rescue Aid Society.

Heads held high, Touch the sky,.

You mean everything to me!