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This Film On

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The Rescuers/The Rescuers Down Under

(1977)

78 min. Walt Disney Pictures. Directors: John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman, Art Stevens, Hendel Butoy, Mike Gabriel. Cast: Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, Geraldine Page, Bill McMillan, Pat Buttram, Joe Flynn, George C. Scott, John Candy, Bernard Fox, Douglas Seale, Peter Firth.

The best-laid plans of mice and men go every which way and loose in Disney's two-fer of The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990). Inspired by Margery Sharp's children's books, the hand-drawn The Rescuers will always have a vivid staying power for anyone who saw it in childhood. Directors John Lounsberry, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Art Stevens give the picture a distinctive, dark look (as the characters scamper between rainy, dirty New York City and the swampy Devil's Bayou) and a blowzy, scarily unhinged villain in Madame Medusa (Geraldine Page).

Madame Medusa has kidnapped little orphan girl Penny (Michelle Stacy) to be a slave she can send down into a skeleton-strewn pit to locate the world's largest diamond, the Devil's Eye. This rather dire set of circumstances calls for a hero—or two. Penny's message-in-a-bottle cry for help reaches the international Rescue Aid Society, a secret organization of mice that meets in an unnoticed nook of the United Nations Headquarters.

There, Hungarian mouse Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) seizes on an opportunity for adventure, and chooses an unlikely partner in the society's nervous janitor Bernard (the artfully hesistant Bob Newhart); she sees something in him—namely his kindness and his determination to get the job done right. Employing the nerve-racking airline of an albatross named Orville (Jim Jordan), the little heroes make it to Devil's Bayou, enlist a dragonfly named Evinrude to help them, and set about finding and springing Penny from Medusa's clutches while dodging her pet alligators Brutus and Nero (Candy Candido).

The Rescuers plays dated now, but there's little reason to believe that kids will much care (okay, it's a little logy when it slows for one of the forgettable montage-y songs, like "Tomorrow is Another Day" or "Someone's Waiting For You"). Maybe it's my irrepressible love of Bob Newhart, but it's easy to root for Bernard and Bianca, and there's a funny chemistry about the pairing of him and Gabor (who makes for an oddly sultry-sounding mouse). The Rescue Aid Society (including the voice of character actor Bernard Fox as The Chairman) is awfully cute, the animation limber, and the intrigue sufficient to carry the story along to its action climax and satisfying resolution. The characters stick in the mind, and the classic Disney animation style works wonders with the likes of Orville and the gators.

Thirteen years later (a significant number for Bernard), Disney released its first animated sequel feature: The Rescuers Down Under. The fomula remains the same: Bernard and Bianca must rescue a child in trouble from a terrifying nasty. This time, an Australian lad named Cody (Adam Ryen)—while romping in the Outback—runs afoul of greedy poacher Percival C. McLeach (George C. Scott), who kidnaps the boy to keep him quiet and make him give up the location of a gigantic golden eagle known as Marahute. It's Bernard and Bianca to the rescue, once they book a flight with Orville's brother Wilbur (John Candy).

Though it incorporates some early CGI animation, The Rescuers Down Under impresses most with its hand-drawn majesty of sun-baked settings, expressive creatures, and high-flying epic sweep. It certainly doesn't hurt having a cast that includes Newhart, Gabor, Scott (whose raspy voice suggests voluminous depths of depravity), and Candy (who lends Wilbur comic spontaneity and rally-the-troops heart). The sequel also tweaks the formula with a brisker pace, and development of leading characters (Bernard longs to pop the question to Bianca) and action sequences, which multiply to fill the space left by the banishment of songs.

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