The Rescuers (1977)

The Rescuers (1977)

The Rescuers seems to be a film of many milestones – released the same year as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, it marked the end of the 70’s and with it, the end of Disney’s era of xerography animation. This also marked the end of the more overly comic style that had dominated Disney’s features since One Hundred and One Dalmatians, returning to a more serious and dramatic adventure. While all of these are admirable accomplishments and many agree that The Rescuers helped breathe new life into Disney, which was slowly becoming very stale and forgettable, I don’t quite agree; though it’s obvious that The Rescuers helped signal the start of a new era for Disney (though not a particularly successful one), when viewed on its own merits, it seems to me that the film knows the direction it wants to take things in, but doesn’t quite get there itself.

While still utilising the xerography technique, The Rescuers has all but done away with that rough and scratchy style and mostly returned to the traditionally more soft and rounded look of the earlier Disney films. While this is nice to see again, there’s nothing else especially interesting about the animation, it’s perfectly fine, but doesn’t really stand out much; a couple of things are really well animated, particularly Madame Medusa and her pet alligators, but for the most part things are a little dry. The same goes for the character designs, while again, a couple of characters are well designed, most of them are a bit boring – the mice in particular have a very dull and generic look and don’t have much detail or personality to them and Penny’s is so typical she may as well be wearing a big sign reading “I AM AN ORPHAN”. Even some of the better designs are pretty derivative, Medusa has a lot of detail and character to her design and animation, but she’s such an obvious retread of Cruella De Vil and Madam Mim (Right down to the alliterative “M” name and being called Madam!) that it’s hard to really get enthused about her; there’s even a scene when she’s driving a car like mad and we zoom in on her face just like Cruella, it’s pretty lazy. The backgrounds at least are very nice, detailed and drawn in an almost surreal manner – the setting of the film really does look great, it’s just a shame not much else really does.

She drives like cra- oh wait we’ve done this one 

The premise for the story is actually quite interesting: a group of mice from around the world who call themselves the Rescue Aid Society send two of their agents, Bernard and Bianca, out on a mission to rescue an orphan girl called Penny. The idea of the Rescue Aid Society is pretty interesting and the few moments we get to see of their organisation are probably the best parts of the movie; there are some clever gags like having the founder be the mouse who pulled a thorn out of a lion’s paw, some fun interactions between the different mice and the insight we get into how their organisation works is quite fascinating. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really focus on this and soon gets Bernard and Bianca out into the world, a shame, because I think the film would’ve been a lot better if it went more into the rules and history of the Rescue Aid Society and showed us a little more of how it worked. The rest of the movie sounds like it should be pretty exciting too, the mice end up in a swamp called the Devil’s Bayou where they have to rescue Penny, who is being held captive on an abandoned river boat by the evil Madame Medusa, who wants her to find a precious diamond called the Devil’s Eye. That’s a really cool and interesting setting and indeed, as said before, the Devil’s Bayou looks great – the mysterious swamp, the old riverboat, the cave where Penny has to search for the diamond, they’re all very striking visuals and create a strong and vivid atmosphere. On the face of it, this seems like a really exciting story with some interesting and original ideas, but somehow, it just isn’t as good in execution as it is in theory, the film is plagued by bad pacing, poorly developed characters and a constant slew of dull and pointless sequences.

The movie takes way too long to get started and wastes far too much time setting up the story – Bernard and Bianca don’t reach the Devil’s Bayou until over half an hour in and don’t meet Penny until an HOUR in; considering the whole point of the story is supposed to be their rescue of Penny, it’s pretty unbelievable that they meet her an hour into a film that is only an hour and seventeen minutes long. This wouldn’t be as bad if Bernard and Bianca’s adventures on the way to the Devil’s Bayou were exciting, if there was significant reason why they take so long to get to Penny or if we saw more of Penny’s struggles alongside them, but no. Much of the first half is taken up with a kind of mystery story of Bernard and Bianca trying to find out where Penny is; this is a perfectly good idea and could’ve made for a great build up to an exciting climax, but the whole idea of the mystery is undermined by the fact that the audience knows from minute one of the movie exactly where Penny is and the clues are so easily spread out for Bernard and Bianca that they should figure things out a lot faster than they do. A lot of time is wasted on the way with pointless scenes like Bernard and Bianca deciding to cut through a zoo, before turning back and going another way because Bernard sees a lion; while a couple of these can be justified as developing or better introducing the characters, many of them just seem to be lazy attempts at dragging the movie out a little longer. The level of filler here is hardly egregious compared to Cinderella or The Aristocats, but there are still too many scenes that go nowhere, add very little to the story and go on for far too long, as in Robin Hood, making it very difficult for the film to hold you interest.

Right around this point in the original cut you’d be seeing a naked woman in the window 

(Seriously, look it up)

The characters are mostly pretty bland; Bernard and Bianca have some personality and chemistry, but don’t really get much time or opportunity to show it. Although Bianca is pretty much exactly the same character as Duchess from The Aristocats, right down to being voiced by Eva Gabor, you can forgive this as she was one of the only good things about that movie and brings the same energy and spirit to this one; Eva Gabor really is a very good voice actress, she brings so much life and personality to the character, it really feels like the animated character is the one saying the words and acting, rather than matching the words of some person in a recording booth. Bernard is also quite well voiced by veteran comedian Bob Newhart, who brings his classically nervous, stammering delivery to the character and helps cement Bernard as an anxious everyman; these two voices really are the perfect fit for the characters and really help shape them. It’s also nice that they get to spend a whole movie together to build their relationship and, while it doesn’t exactly develop prominently in the foreground as effectively as Lady in the Tramp, it is downplayed and subtle enough that it works and comes off as believable, rather than in The Aristocats. Sadly, the other characters don’t really have any of these good points – Penny is the typical cutesy Disney kid, she can’t talk properly, she carries a stuffed animal around etc. etc. The villains are fantastically generic, Medusa being, as said before, a very obvious Cruella De Vil knockoff with a little Madam Mim thrown in and her sidekick is... well a sidekick. He’s a goofy, incompetent henchman there to engage in slapstick with his boss, he’s Smee, he’s Sir Hiss, he’s Jasper and Horace the list goes on. The other animals are an equally derivative collection of random townspeople, an old turtle, a plucky mole, a laid-back rabbit, a lazy mouse, it’s the cast of Nottingham in Robin Hood, it’s the other animals in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, again, the list goes on. Though there are a couple of standout characters such as the alligators, Brutus and Nero and a dragonfly named Evinrude, it says a lot that these are the only characters that don’t speak and yet they’re the only ones that are any fun; the cast of this movie is just really lacking in personality.

The music is quite frankly, bizarre, the score is pretty good and the main theme in particular is very nice, a dark tune that helps solidify the dangerous and mysterious atmosphere of the swamp; however, the songs are very odd. They are not traditional musical numbers, but aren’t really little tunes or narrative songs, either, they’re all just kind of sad... I don’t even know what to call them, maybe folk songs? They don’t sound like Disney songs at all, they sound like Joni Mitchell songs, or maybe songs from some of Don Bluth’s later, weaker films (Which I suppose makes sense, Don Bluth did work on this movie). Either way, I don’t think they fit the style of the film at all and as a result, they’re quite distracting and, more importantly, just not very good. 

‘Nero do you think ours and our master’s character designs are just gonna be recycled to be a couple of eels and an octopus lady about 12 years down the line?’

‘You know Brutus, I’m starting to think you don’t really believe in this project.’

The Rescuers is a movie with a lot of potential, but a weak delivery – the central premise is intriguing and unique, but lost in a sea of bad pacing and poor narrative structure. Though the central characters are likeable and interesting, time that could’ve been spent developing their characters is unfortunately spent on ultimately unnecessary scenes and introducing a wider cast of boring supporting characters and completely unmemorable villains. The setting and atmosphere for the movie are great, but they are wasted by just not having anything very interesting happen and the tone they help to set is damaged by the boring and entirely ill-suited songs. Though you can be dragged in to the plight of Penny and feel for her emotionally, her overly cutesy attitude often comes off as excessively sentimental and manipulative, making it hard to really care about the outcome.The Rescuers has a lot of good ideas with a lot of poor execution, it’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not a very good one either.

Other Thoughts:

10 More Things You Definitely Never Knew About Disney: Bambi’s Mother AND Bambi are in this one guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG someone get Buzzfeed back on the phone I need to submit my fourteen word, eighty gif theory piece on how The Rescuers, Bambi, Frozen and Pete’s Dragon all take place in the same universe!!!!!!!

Also there’s a bird, he’s lame

Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

4.5/10