The Rescuers (1977)

3 March 2019

The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990) are an interesting pair of films.

The Rescuers was a fairly simple story about a girl that gets kidnapped and is forced to seek out a diamond from her captors. The animation is usually charming, although sometimes feels derivative (You can especially see similarities with Madame Medusa and another Disney villain, it seems some writers wanted to reuse Cruella de Vil for the part). But the story moves well, has clever ideas to make this mouse-centric world believable. The voice talents of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor also play out well and compliment the film nicely. Stylistically it feels slightly dated, but its simplicity and emotion hold on even after 40 years.

Notably, in this time Don Bluth was among the Disney animators (he would leave soon with several other Disney animators and do his own films in the 80s - The Secret on NIMH, An American Tale, The Land Before Time). This would lead to Disney reorganizing both its animation studio and its entire organization during that decade. 8/10

2 June 2014

Tonight I watched 3 films, courtesy of Netflix: Anatomy of a Murder (with James Stewart and George C. Scott), The Rescuers Down Under, and The Rescuers. It had been some time since I saw any of them, but it was good to see them with older eyes. Especially The Rescuers - that movie's art, music and production were really impressive for their time, as the opening sequence still beautifully illustrates.

(* no rating given at the time) 8/10