This was one of those Disney movies I was ready to see over and over during my childhood. I liked the mice, I thought the albatross was funny, and the dragonfly and alligators were great—but what really captured my interest was the skull.

Human skulls were not common in children’s entertainment in those days (late 1970s, early 80s). I was fascinated. The skull was realistic enough to be creepy and make me feel like squirming, and then it had a jewel in its eye socket! Invisible shivers. Something about there being eye holes in the first place, the emptiness of the skull where eyes ought to be, was particularly unnerving. (We soon see the whole inside of the empty skull, but it’s the eye sockets that got to me.)

I loved that part of the movie, every time.

Unlike The Aristocats (another big favorite), The Rescuers had no spectacular catchy music; “Rescue Aid So-ci-e-ty” was likable, but not amazing, and that’s the only tune I could remember from the whole thing. Watching it again, I find that the other songs are quite nice, but they’re gentle (or sad) and not tunes that reach out and shake you. They’re like slightly more hopeful Carpenters songs.

I was an adult before I understood the movie was based on a series of books, and it wasn’t until a year ago that I read any of them, the first two. The things I remember most are:
1. There are vast differences between the movie and the books.
2. The second book (Miss Bianca) includes crazy wind-up robot maids that are utterly unrealistic even today.
3. The first book ended so conclusively there could not be a continuation featuring these two mice, and yet there was, and the resolution of the first one was conveniently forgotten.

Disney sort of took the Bianca-and-Bernard-meet-and-get-to-know-each-other material from book one, transformed and transplanted the captive-girl-and-rich-crazy-woman aspects of book two, then added in their own plot (possibly with some elements lifted from later books I didn’t read). Basically, don’t expect to find the movie story in one of the Margery Sharp books.

• A romance between Bianca and Bernard doesn’t seem quite right. They’re in two different worlds, right? She’s very glamorous and he very much isn’t. And yet, watching it on screen, with the vocal performance of Eva Gabor and the way Bianca is animated, it does seem to work after all. Seeing and listening to Bianca interact with other characters I just end up believing, yes, she might pick him. Why not? It feels like there’s no reason she has to but also no reason she wouldn’t.

• The opening credits play out over a series of lovely paintings that show Penny’s message bottle traveling through the waters. For the most part these are still images, with the camera panning across them, and it’s easy to miss that something is actually happening. Regular animation might better focus the audience (especially children) on the bottle and its journey, but I’m not sure I would choose that if I could.

• Although the artwork is much more polished and finished than what you see in The Aristocats, this movie too has some of that sketch-like style created by leaving a few working lines unerased and visible under the colors. It’s mostly seen around the outer edges of a character, particularly when someone is moving quickly.

• In addition to the skull, another thing that fascinated my childhood self was the use of a comb as a ladder. I don’t know why, but that just really struck me, probably connected to seeing an everyday object that’s small to me but huge to these characters and used for something totally different. (Call it the “Borrowers Effect.”)

• In Madame Medusa’s pawn shop, she has an NRA badge hanging on the bars protecting the cashier’s window. Boy does she live up to it.

• At this point Disney was still doing alcohol as comic relief, though without identifying it as alcohol. It’s just a jug, but you can figure out quickly that it’s moonshine.

• Honestly the whole element of what I’ll kindly call “uneducated country folk” humor puts me off nowadays, but I’m just going to overlook it here and tell myself it’s redeemed by how helpful these characters are. (They’re rescuers too, actually.)

Decades later, I still enjoy The Rescuers a lot.

Though I think I’d like Evinrude more without the moustache.

The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

I didn’t see this movie until fifteen or twenty years after its release. As much as I loved the original, I didn’t feel any particular draw to the sequel. I have a feeling it looked too polished for my tastes, not as rough and earthy as the original, giving it the flavor of a cheap, sanitized direct-to-home-video release. (Though it’s safe to say the sequel cost a whole lot more, and probably had more work-hours poured into it.)

Before watching Rescuers Down Under a second time, I couldn’t remember much about it aside from a large bird flying down over a waterfall, a mouse* with an Australian accent hitting on Miss Bianca, and a boy being the rescued human. I didn’t recall anything that would justify making the sequel—after 13 years, it wasn’t a hot property, and the new story was evidently not that memorable. So maybe Disney felt they had to put out something, and Beauty and the Beast wasn’t ready yet?

Yet it’s an enjoyable movie. There’s a lot of really lovely animation—especially early on, with dives and soaring and little details like the boy running his hand up a loose feather—and I feel good seeing Bernard and Bianca together again. (It isn’t clear how much time has passed since the first movie, and that’s probably a good thing; you can decide for yourself how long their relationship has been developing.)

• According to the credits, this movie wasn’t even “suggested by” Margery Sharp’s books, it was “suggested by characters created by Margery Sharp.” Lotta distance there.

• Surprisingly, Bianca and Bernard are played by the same stars as in the first film; even the R.A.S. chairman’s voice actor returns. They couldn’t have Orville the albatross voiced by the same man, and instead of the easy answer—quietly recast the role—they chose to hire someone famous and say this film’s albatross was Orville’s brother (called Wilbur, naturally).

• There’s a lot here that anticipates The Lion King. During the opening credits, a casual viewer might even think this was The Lion King before the title appears. And let me say the movement through the field of flowers, which go whizzing by while objects in the distance barely get bigger, is marvelous.

• This was one of Disney’s early efforts in mixing CGI with hand-drawn animation. It isn’t quite seamless, because you can tell certain shots use computer-generated objects, but it’s smooth enough you don’t think, “Ugh, that looks lousy! How primitive!” Or at least I didn’t think that. I’ve seen lots of mixtures of CGI and hand-drawn art that didn’t work, but this one did. (Also I was kind of shocked to see a Pixar section in the closing credits. This early.)

• A point that may seem minor: it’s essential to the climax that mice can’t get out of a certain giant cage, so fine mesh—like the material a screen door is made of—has to be lining that cage. That is really difficult to draw, keeping the lines close enough together that we can tell what it is but with enough space between lines that we can see what’s on the other side. The animators had to do it in multiple scenes, even before the mesh was important to the plot, and they did it perfectly.

• The chainsaw was too much. Eee.

• Interesting aspect of the title: as in the first film, animals rescue humans, but this time humans also rescue animals.

• The villain in this story is not only ready to feed a little boy to crocodiles, he says outright that he thinks that’s fun. Yikes.

• Heroes in Disney movies don’t normally take extra steps that will obviously speed up a villain’s death. Well.

• Where’s this little boy’s accent?

As Disney sequels go, this one’s good. The story as a whole might not stick with you too long, but the plot seems solid and well-planned. There’s just some emotion missing, which the action doesn’t quite generate. Otherwise the movie received all the effort and treatment a theatrical release deserves. (This is no Return of Jafar.)

*I thought he might be a jerboa, but after five minutes of research I figure he’s a species of hopping mouse, maybe the spinifex.