Disney Animated Classic Number 29
Starring: Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, John Candy, Adam Ryen & George C. Scott.

Directed by: Hendel Butoy & Mike Gabriel

Rating: ★★½

This time, the plucky mouse couple, Miss Bianca (Gabor) and Bernard (Newhart) are called, through the mouse emergency grapevine, to Australia, to save a little Australian American boy named Cody (Ryen), who has been kidnapped by an evil Australian American hunter named McLeach (Scott) to force him to tell him the whereabouts of a (literally) giant golden eagle. I don’t understand why the Rescue Aid Society doesn’t have delegates to help who actually live in Australia, but anyway, they seem to have to call New York City instead of taking matters into their own hands, just so the protagonists from the first film can travel to an exotic location. 

Once again, there is an extended sequence of the two mice finding and flying on another albatross, this time the brother of the one in the first film, who is voiced by John Candy, and this character is only here to provide comic relief and to have a superfluous sub plot involving an insane hospital and egg-sitting. So basically, just like the first one, there is a lot of padding here, and not really much plot. Although, there is a lot more dynamic action, which starts off being interesting and looking amazing, but rapidly wears thin, as once again there is just something lacking, and these sequences quickly get boring. The opening of the film, which involves Cody flying through the clouds on the back of the illogically and incredibly unrealistic double-decker bus sized eagle, is breathtaking, but sadly this is probably the best bit of the entire film. 

There were several main issues that I had with The Rescuers Down Under. To begin with, Cody, the Australian American child is nowhere near as endearing as Penny, the little girl from the first movie, and since he partakes in unbelievable acts of courage, for example scaling a sheer cliff face, unassisted, for several hundred feet, it is hard empathise with him. He also isn’t really placed in any incredibly dangerous situations (well, not as dangerous as climbing up a cliff by yourself in the Outback) so we know that he is indestructible. 

Secondly, as already mentioned, as much as I love John Candy, his character really gives nothing to the film, although I can see that young children would find his bumbling buffoonery amusing. 

Thirdly, there is a really creepy and pointless love triangle wedged in between Miss Bianca, Bernard and an Australian animal thing called Jake. I don’t know why Disney insists on sexualising Miss Bianca throughout both of these movies, but it continues here, and we all know that Bernard will succeed in his attempt to propose to her (which he fails to do at the beginning) so there really isn’t any tension- it is predictably going to end how we know it will- with Bernard saving the day and getting the mouse (girl?). 

Fourthly, a point that is probably pointless to mention but I will say it, no one really has an Australian accent, once again showing very ethnocentric traits imbedded in the Hollywood psyche. They can’t hire Australian voice actors- why?   

And finally, the best things about the first film (the dark tone, the tension and the incredibly cute and endearing child) were all scrapped for this film as they chose to instead make it lighter and brighter, therefore losing any drama and apprehension. 

But, saying this, the weakest parts of the first movie (the fact it didn’t really have any action and was generally boring) were fixed, and so there are a lot of things happening which do make it slightly more interesting, even if it is just ogling at the amazing animation. So, if they took both films and squashed them together, taking the best elements of both, you would get one decent movie, instead of two bland ones, which I’m not sure is a good thing, or works as an endorsement for either film.

There were some good aspects to The Rescuers Down Under. I did enjoy the flora and fauna- it was clearly well researched and amazingly animated. There are some cool looking 3D sequences that use early computer graphics (the first time Disney worked with Pixar!), for example New York City and some of the Outback and although these look dated now, they are still fun little set pieces. 

The Australian Outback America Wild West styled villain McLeach is also quite good at being villainous, and so is his evil animal sidekick, a salamander called Joanna, but he is clearly and unsubtly representative of an environmentalist message about how poaching is evil, and because of this, he suffers a horrific Disney death which he rightly deserves after trying to feed Cody to the crocodiles.

One thing I do find strange about The Rescuers Down Under, is that the Rescuers themselves aren’t really in it that much, and when they are, they are boring (just like in the first one). You can’t flog a dead horse, and I’m obviously not alone in thinking that the Rescuers are dry characters and undeserving of a sequel, as this movie was a box-office flop. Once again, not much really happens in this film, and although in some ways it is better than the first, in some ways it definitely isn’t: to me, anyway, both are fairly weak, and just like The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under is not bad, but it just isn’t good, and that is why they both get the same star rating. 

If I had to choose which one to re-watch (if I was forced) I think it would be a tough choice, mainly because I didn’t think that the sequel could be any weaker than the first, but it disappointingly was. Since I really liked the Penny character in the first, as well as the truly harrowing scene in the sink hole, I’d probably pick the first one, but trust me, I would fast forward the rest of the movie and just watch that part. I really hope that no child ever forces me to re-visit either of these because I don’t think I could take watching them again!