Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Fun story and wonderful animation
Cons: Wilber's sub-plot; very dark and realistically scary.
The Bottom Line:
An Australian trip
With plenty of danger and
Great animation
When the second golden age of Disney animation is discussed, people
always talk about The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast near the
beginning of that decade. But there was
a movie in between them - Disney's first animated sequel, The Rescuers Down Under. Released in 1990, thirteen years
after the first one, it isn't quite as good as the movies around it, but it is
still worth watching.
Our story opens in the Australian outback as we meet Cody
(voiced by Adam Ryen). He is a friend to
all the animals in the area, but on this day, he sets out to free a rare, giant
golden eagle. Once freed from a trap,
the two become friends, and Cody even learns the location of the bird's nest.
But that night he falls into a trap set by McLeach (George
C. Scott), a poacher in the area. When
McLeach realizes that Cody knows where the eagle can be found, he kidnaps the
boy to try to get the information from him.
And so the call goes out to the Rescue Aid Society, who send
their two best agents, Miss Bianca and Bernard (Eva Gabor and Bob
Newhart). When the two land, they meet
up with Jake (Tristan Rogers) a kangaroo mouse who helps them in this foreign territory. But will the mice find Cody and free him
before McLeach finds the eagle?
The first thing you'll notice if you watch these two movies
back to back is how different the animation style is. Thirteen years makes a huge difference. The background is deeper, and some of the
shots in the opening are breathtaking.
They easily foreshadow the opening of The Lion King just a couple years
down the road. This film was near the
beginning of the flirting with using computer even in hand drawn animation, and
the results are beautiful. You can especially
see this in the fun flying sequence near the beginning. This film also marks the first collaboration
between Disney and Pixar since Pixar did much of the post production for the
film.
The movie itself seems to have dual stories until the end. We'll spend some time with Cody and the cast
of animal characters he's met at McLeach's cabin, and then we'll watch Bernard,
Miss Bianca, and Jake's journey to find them.
It's not until the final third that things really come together, but
when they do it is great.
The characters here are pretty basic, the exception being
Bernard and Miss Bianca. We get to watch
as Bernard spends most of the film trying to propose to Miss Bianca, only to be
interrupted time and time again.
Meanwhile, Jake is flirting with her.
The way this pays off in the end is fun to watch. Plus they resurrect Bernard's fear of flying
to great comic effect.
Of course, all the voice cast does a great job bringing
their characters to life. There isn't a
poor performance in the bunch.
While this film does use the melody of "Rescue Aid
Society" at one point, none of the characters sing and there are no
original songs in the film. Frankly, I
don't think the movie needs them.
Like the original, this film features a kid in pretty serious
danger, but for some reason McLeach seems like the darker villain, and some of
what he does and almost does to Cody is pretty dark for a kid's film. I'm a little surprised this one is rated G. Again, other Disney films are scarier, but
this one certainly has it's moments.
My biggest complaint about the film is Wilber. Voiced by John Candy, he is the albatross our
heroes use to get to Australia. Unlike
his brother Orville in the first movie (get it?), he sticks around after they
land. Yes, he does wind up playing a
part later in the film, but his scenes until then aren't funny at all, and he's
supposed to be the comic relief. I
really wish they'd done something else with his character.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for stopping by. In order to combat spam, I moderate most comments. I'll get to your comment as soon as I can.