Runtime: 77 minutes
Directed by: Several animators
Starring: The voices of Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, Geraldine Page,
Joe Flynn, & Michelle Stacy
From: Disney
I saw this movie more than 30 years ago as a kid… which was barely remembered as I’d hope to recall how weirdly 70’s this all was. Before the topic is broached, I probably did not ever experience The Rescuers Down Under; one day that’ll change as I was more charmed by this peculiar picture than expected.
After all, this is a world where there’s a rescue society run by mice which holds meetings in the UN building, children & animals freely communicate w/ each other—and oh yeah, a vile white trash woman and her chubby feckless henchman kidnap an orphaned girl in NYC so she can perform a specific task in a cave located in a Louisiana swamp. Thank goodness then that other animals assist, including a dragonfly that is named Evinrude as it is like a motor for transport vehicles and a mouse that drinks moonshine. Yeah, this is rather odd, especially once you hear that there are songs on the soundtrack which are like the Disney version of 1970’s soft rock; that’s a positive for me.
At times, The Rescuers has no chill; evil lady Medusa (yep, that’s her name) tells child Penny that “no one will adopt you, because you’re ugly!” It’s odd, which can be a term used to describe most of the film… but that is a positive for me. This has personality in spades & was endlessly charming; this includes the lead mice Bernard & Bianca, Penny, the moonshine-quaffing mouse, & Rufus the elderly cat. It was a relatively serious movie w/ nice animation-including the contributions of Don Bluth-which was better than I expected going in. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken until 2024 for me to discuss this childhood memory.
One last note: It’d be shameful for me not to share this odd yet true anecdote: afterwards Disney claimed that someone did this after the fact, but it was most likely an animator that stuck in a photo of a TOPLESS WOMAN in two frames of the movie. For once this is a rumor that wasn’t just urban legend; it was always there but not found until the late 90’s. Yeah, at that point it was excised from the movie; photographic evidence can be found if you’re curious…
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