Disney Movie Challenge
The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
The first true Disney Sequel. It’s hard to believe that after making movies for over 50 years this is the first time they made a sequel to any of their films. But of all their films this one makes the most sense for a sequel (would have also liked to see one for The Great Mouse Detective). This is also an oddball film in the Disney Renaissance era. It’s lack of songs and princesses makes it feel more like a leftover from the pre-renaissance era.
Obviously based on the title the two mice from The Rescuers are headed to Australia. It reunites the two main cast members of the original with Ava Gabor as Miss Bianca and Bob Newhart as Bernard. The villain McLeach is voiced by George C. Scott. This time they have to rescue a kid who was kidnapped by a poacher, McLeach. McLeach is a poacher with his sights set on his ultimate prize a rare golden eagle. When he finds out that this kid, Cody, knows where it is he kidnaps him and tries to coerce the whereabouts of the eagle from him. Meanwhile Miss Bianca and Bernard team up with a local hopping mouse named Jack to find Cody.
This film isn’t quite as dark as the first one. Cody isn’t an orphan and he is an adventurous kid and really good at getting in and out of trouble by himself. While we never meet his parents we learn that they are looking for him and that McLeach has tried to make it look like he was eaten by some crocodiles. The strongest part of this film is George C. Scott as the villain. He has such a unique voice and totally plays it up in a terrifying way. You never once got the feeling he had a good side. If you like romance there is a little subplot where Bernard wants to ask Miss Bianca to marry him and how he is jealous of Jack always showing off.
Besides being Disney’s first sequel the importance of this film is that it was the first one made entirely using the CAPS system. CAPS was developed by Pixar as a way to scan drawings into the computer and gives directors more tools to manipulate the film. While the film is still hand drawn it no longer needs to be inked and placed on cels. It also doesn’t need to go through the Xerography process to transfer it to films. I wish I knew more about the process of animating films so I could understand it better, but this was a huge advancement and allowed for the films to be made more quickly. It also opened up a lot of camera movements that weren’t possible before. The weird thing is that Disney really kept the process under wraps. They felt that if people knew they were using computers to make their animated films it would lose some of the mystery. It wasn’t until 1994 (a year before Toy Story came out) that Disney opened up about the process.
Overall: It’s a great adventure movie and I love adventures movies so I had a lot of fun with it. It also has one of the most underrated villains as George C. Scott brings a lot of menace to the character. The oddest thing to me was there weren’t that many Australian actors in here besides Jack and a few side characters.
Random Facts:
John Candy plays Wilbur. Jim Jordan who played Orville in the original had died before production on the sequel, not wanting to replace him they created a brother Wilbur. Both were named after a Wright Brother.
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