The Rescuers Down Under

The first official sequel produced by the Disney studio, The Rescuers Down Under sacrifices the bruised heart of the original in favor of razzmatazz and loud action sequences. There’s also a strange subplot involving John Candy’s albatross getting questionable medical care, played purely for slapstick but also completely unnecessary to the film as a whole. The Rescuers Down Under is a dip from the dizzy heights of The Little Mermaid, but it’s not the worst film in the Renaissance.

Reuniting with Bernard and Miss Bianca is pleasant, and it’s nice to see the latest development of Disney’s Nick and Nora Charles. Finding their way to Australia in search of a kidnapped boy, they team-up with a Crocodile Dundee-style mouse and a giant golden eagle, and take down an evil poacher. Never for one moment do we doubt that they’ll come out on top, and the various threats are never terribly threatening. There’s nothing here quite as fun as the smoky bayou chases or hungry alligators.

And our villain is a bit of a lame duck, never truly developing into something frightening, played too often for laughs, and he seems beamed in from a Mad Max movie. That last part would be particularly thrilling if they had managed to make him terrifying, but he gets involved with too many slapstick moments to register as truly deadly. Shame, as George C. Scott gives it his typical bravado and is clearly game to add a new name to Disney’s pantheon of movie villains.

Where The Rescuers Down Under really shines is in the chemistry between Bernard and Bianca, and the various flight scenes. Or when the film decides to scale back and just observe the Australian Outback. The landscapes are beautifully rendered, filled with warm hues and colors, and all manner of exotic flora and fauna. But the flight scenes are truly something, borrowing liberally from Hayao Miyazaki's flight scenes, they sweep us away: across a waterfall, through a forest, and up high into a mountaintop. If only the film had found a better story to wrap around these flight sequences. It's fun and entertaining, but incredibly slight and a comedown from the original's battered heart and empathetic connections.