Widely considered the best of Disney's seventies output, The Rescuers has dated rather terribly but more flatteringly than Robin Hood or The Aristocats. Unlike those films, there is an actual weight to the drama here and some of the ingenuity of classic Disney, owing perhaps to the presence of younger and more driven animators making their debuts as animation directors. Such drive can't quite undo the mixed quality of the animation and the kind of pussying out that keeps it from quite working, but one can understand why it's considered a minor classic from Disney's work.
I don't much care for it myself, but I do have to commend Disney for actually taking some risks on this one. Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor show some real chemistry as voice actors and make a likable pair, but it's the Penny story that lifts this. There's real Dickensian gravitas to her conflict with Madame Medusa, and a melancholy that even older Disney may not have attempted to accomplish. If Penny can be cloying at times, she's still fairly convincing as a character. Madame Medusa, though a retread of Cruella de Vil, still works thanks to Geraldine Page's performance and Milt Kahl's masterfully bombastic animation (an attempt to one-up his friend Marc Davis, who handled Cruella). There are some tools here for a very entertaining adventure story.
Where it falls flat is in the execution. The narrative meanders to an irritating degree, hurling itself at red herrings too much and taking a much longer time than it needs to progress. Very few of the side characters are all that memorable, aside from Ollie Johnston's self caricature as Rufus the Cat. This is probably the slowest Disney film since Fantasia as a result, and not nearly as hypnotic. It also doesn't help that, for all its moody atmospherics, it insists on lightening the mood at the times when it could potentially be at its most ballsy. Medusa pointing a gun at a small child is pretty damn risky for a Disney picture, but thrills turn to insults as she's subsequently besieged by a group of cartoon critters. It's a real shame, as none of these problems are appalling on their own but pile up too much.
In terms of animation, this one is a major step up from Robin Hood, but still suffers from the studio's cost-cutting tendencies of the time. The dark bayou backgrounds have a lovely Gothic quality to them, but in general the color design here is dull and never rises above your typical Scooby Doo episode. The mice have jarring flesh colored eyes which echo far too much of latter day Hanna-Barbera dreck. As for key animation, this was a landmark for Disney in that it marked the debut of a non-9 Old Men animator in a directing role. This artist was none other than the infamous Don Bluth, whose influence can be felt throughout the project. He's often credited with doing away with such irritating practices as dividing the different departments with no collaboration amongst them, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a lot to do with the darker tone of this film. As for his animation, he shows a talent for hyperactive set pieces, such as the Zoo scene (which is a superfluous and stupid sequence otherwise) but also holds responsibility for the airport scene, with some of the most awkward rotoscoping outside of a Ralph Bakshi movie. The star of this piece is Milt Kahl, whose Medusa is a model example of animated performance. Overall, this is a mixed-bag technically, but one that shows some potentiality for an edgier new direction that might have revitalized Disney (it never happened, of course).
Perhaps its not a great film, or even a very good one, but you have to hand it to the new crowd of eager Disney animators for trying to advance to a new kind of film for Disney. Alas, the whole product comes off as mediocre to me, despite moments of greatness here and there. Similar effort seems to have been made in the next couple of Disney features, but they were even less successful. as a whole. I don't violently hate it the way I do Robin Hood, but it leaves me cold and disappointed. Intrigued, but underwhelmed.
I don't much care for it myself, but I do have to commend Disney for actually taking some risks on this one. Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor show some real chemistry as voice actors and make a likable pair, but it's the Penny story that lifts this. There's real Dickensian gravitas to her conflict with Madame Medusa, and a melancholy that even older Disney may not have attempted to accomplish. If Penny can be cloying at times, she's still fairly convincing as a character. Madame Medusa, though a retread of Cruella de Vil, still works thanks to Geraldine Page's performance and Milt Kahl's masterfully bombastic animation (an attempt to one-up his friend Marc Davis, who handled Cruella). There are some tools here for a very entertaining adventure story.
Where it falls flat is in the execution. The narrative meanders to an irritating degree, hurling itself at red herrings too much and taking a much longer time than it needs to progress. Very few of the side characters are all that memorable, aside from Ollie Johnston's self caricature as Rufus the Cat. This is probably the slowest Disney film since Fantasia as a result, and not nearly as hypnotic. It also doesn't help that, for all its moody atmospherics, it insists on lightening the mood at the times when it could potentially be at its most ballsy. Medusa pointing a gun at a small child is pretty damn risky for a Disney picture, but thrills turn to insults as she's subsequently besieged by a group of cartoon critters. It's a real shame, as none of these problems are appalling on their own but pile up too much.
In terms of animation, this one is a major step up from Robin Hood, but still suffers from the studio's cost-cutting tendencies of the time. The dark bayou backgrounds have a lovely Gothic quality to them, but in general the color design here is dull and never rises above your typical Scooby Doo episode. The mice have jarring flesh colored eyes which echo far too much of latter day Hanna-Barbera dreck. As for key animation, this was a landmark for Disney in that it marked the debut of a non-9 Old Men animator in a directing role. This artist was none other than the infamous Don Bluth, whose influence can be felt throughout the project. He's often credited with doing away with such irritating practices as dividing the different departments with no collaboration amongst them, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a lot to do with the darker tone of this film. As for his animation, he shows a talent for hyperactive set pieces, such as the Zoo scene (which is a superfluous and stupid sequence otherwise) but also holds responsibility for the airport scene, with some of the most awkward rotoscoping outside of a Ralph Bakshi movie. The star of this piece is Milt Kahl, whose Medusa is a model example of animated performance. Overall, this is a mixed-bag technically, but one that shows some potentiality for an edgier new direction that might have revitalized Disney (it never happened, of course).
Perhaps its not a great film, or even a very good one, but you have to hand it to the new crowd of eager Disney animators for trying to advance to a new kind of film for Disney. Alas, the whole product comes off as mediocre to me, despite moments of greatness here and there. Similar effort seems to have been made in the next couple of Disney features, but they were even less successful. as a whole. I don't violently hate it the way I do Robin Hood, but it leaves me cold and disappointed. Intrigued, but underwhelmed.