Movie Thoughts: The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

• Released: 16 November 1990
• Directed by: Hendel Butoy, Mike Gabriel
• Running time: 1 h 17 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

Bianca and Bernard assist a boy in Australia in protecting the last golden eagle and her eggs.

My Thoughts

Really? The first sequel in the Walt Disney Animation Studios lineup is one to...The Rescuers of all movies? ...Okay then. I mean, I don't hate the idea. I disliked the first movie, but that also means that there's room for improvement in a sequel. Also, the concept of mice rescuing various kids does lend itself to multiple movies. So let's see what they've got in store.

It's...not perfect, but I definitely like it fine. It's an improvement over the first movie, that's for sure. Whereas I'd classify the first film as mediocre as best, the sequel definitely falls in the "pretty dang decent" category. I do still think it maybe one of the weaker ones of the Disney renaissance (not as bad as Pocahontas, though), but it's still decent.

The story is nothing all that original. The generic "stop the hunters" trope, which I personally dislike, but this time it's made explicitly clear that the villain is a poacher, so that somewhat subverts it. I would still have liked for the villain to be like, you know, actually interesting, like some of the best baddies that came out of the renaissance, but he does his job fine, I guess.

I still don't care for our main characters a lot, but they were fine. Cody is just a fine protagonist, and I am very thankful they didn't try to needlessly hard to make him seem pwecious like Penny in the first Rescuers movie. Bernard and Bianca are fine, and our tag-along Jake was a fun foil to Bernard. I also do like how the movie's climax involves Bernard overcoming his fears and facing McLeach to save Cody. 

The best part of this movie was absolutely the visuals, though. It's not even some of the best animation out of the renaissance era, but damn, it looks good. The backgrounds look great (it's actually quite rare to see Australia portrayed in a Disney movie, so I liked that), the animation is very fluid and above all a massive improvement over that in the original Rescuers.

That movie had the godawful sketchy style to the max and didn't even bother to color in the eye whites of the main characters, making them rather unexpressive. Here, everything has smooth lineart, the animation overall is better and the eye whites are properly colored in. It's such a huge improvement I'm glad to see.

The most impressive scenes are undoubtedly the ones where Cody rides Marahute the majestic eagle. They're brief, but the visuals and soundtrack really get their moments to shine in them. Also, fun fact to do with the movie: it was the first movie that was created completely digitally (using the CAPS system). 

Overall just a big improvement over the first. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend it to everyone, but if you're curious, I'd say it wouldn't hurt to check out. You can at least look up the beautiful flying scenes if interested.