Rescuers Down Under

The first Disney sequel to actually become a canon film, Rescuers Down Under often gets overlooked in favour of the original film, which can be understandable since it's hard to really outdo the first film. With that said, Rescuers Down Under still manages to hold it's own quite nicely.

Right off the bat there is a large jump in the animation department, given how many years had passed for the technology to improve, and it really shows. The opening sequence is really nice to look at, and I think all of the animation really suited the Australian location, while in the original the more watercolor feeling backgrounds felt fitting for the swamp location. One thing that stood out for me was how well the golden eagle, Marahute, looked. It definitely looks as if a lot of work was put into animating her, and it shows.

While the story is still a pretty basic "Rescue the child in danger," there's a few shifts in view points through the film. We get to follow our heroes Miss Bianca, Bernard and their guide Jake, though also check in at times with Cody the kidnapped child, the villain McLeach, and finally Wilbur the albatross who flies our heroes to the Outback. Despite the constant shift in viewpoints, everything was rather easy to follow though I think things would have been better if Wilbur had been given a smaller role so that Bianca and Bernard could have more focus given to them. We get two small subplots in the film, the first of which is Bernard trying to propose to Bianca, while the other follows Wilbur having hurt his spine during his landing. One thing about Wilbur's subplot is that the nurse mice are voiced by Russi Taylor, who is better known as Minnie Mouse.

However, there are two things that really stand out as flaws to me in this film aside from the rather average story. The first thing is that Cody scales up a GIGANTIC cliff without any gear at all and at one point he looks down and we see just how far up he is. This.... is a bit too unbelievable to really be taken seriously and as a kid I'm quite sure I just thought Cody was really cool for being able to do that, but now as an adult I just shake my head. The second thing that takes me out of story is that in the climax, Bernard dives down and drags Cody up above the surface of the rushing water and manages to save him. Again, it just feels like this is stretching logic a bit far that a mouse can drag a much heavier human up to the surface.

Now... the last thing I want to comment on is actually a really big can of worms and it's making the comparison of the talking animals versus the animals who we see that are unable to speak. This is hardly the first time where animals are able to speak in a film, or where animals are silent, but in this film we get a mixture of both much like in Talespin. So instead of rambling any further, I will (eventually) dedicate a full post to this.

All in all, Rescuers Down Under is a really good film and certainly one of the best sequels we have seen. With that said, there are still some flaws that keep this from being 'Great.'

3 1/2 /5