Review: The Rescuers

A young orphan girl has been kidnapped by the ghastly thief Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page) and forced to search for a precious diamond stuck in some kind of cave. The poor girl’s only hope appears to be two mice from the Rescue Aid Society, Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart) and Miss Bianca (voiced by Eva Gabor). Jim Jordan voices Orville the Albatross, who flies the mice to the girl’s rescue. John McIntire voices an aging cat named Rufus who befriended the girl prior to her kidnapping, John Fiedler voices an owl, and Pat Buttram voices a superfluous drunken bumpkin muskrat.

 

This 1977 Disney animated movie appears so rarely on TV that I actually saw the 1990 sequel first. The sequel (“The Rescuers Down Under”) is better, I might add, but this one’s pretty good in its own right and was obviously enough of a box-office hit to spawn the first-ever sequel for a Disney animated film. Things don’t start out too well I must say, with an absolutely dreary opening credits song ‘The Journey’ by a Barbra Streisand wannabe named Shelby Flint (The majority of the songs are drippy, Maureen McGovern-sounding dirges. Hardly ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ or ‘The Bear Necessities’). We also have what I consider to be the worst Disney character animation up until 1995’s  “Pocahontas” (The 40s and 50s era Disney animation is better than this). I’m sure this was a restored version I was watching, but you wouldn’t know it from how muddy it all looks. Gee, do you ‘ya think soon-to-defect Don Bluth was part of the animation team here? Bernard and Bianca in particular look totally lifeless and charmless here, despite typically good work by Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor, respectively. The only character who worked for me on a visual level was the intentionally horrid-looking villainess.

 

Still, the premise and title characters are charming (just not visually), as are the supporting characters. Veteran western character actor John McIntire is terrific as elderly cat Rufus, and Geraldine Page voices one of Disney animation’s best villains, Medusa. She steals the show as the ghastly-looking (and sounding), alligator-riding (!) monster of a woman. She’s like an animated Wicked Witch of the West, and I’d argue she’s a better Disney villain than the very similar (and still terrific) Cruella De Vil, simply by being in the film a lot more than Cruella was in “One Hundred and One Dalmatians”. John Fiedler’s vocal talents sadly end up wasted voicing an owl who only speaks with 15 minutes to go.

 

It’s a briskly paced film, and better than “The Great Mouse Detective”, but a tad dreary visually and aurally. Still, it’s pretty cute and Medusa’s really something to behold. The trio of directors are John Lounsbery (a former animator in his directing debut), Wolfgang Reitherman (“Sleeping Beauty”, “The Jungle Book”, “Robin Hood”), and Art Stevens (“The Fox and the Hound”). The film is scripted by Ken Anderson (“Pinocchio”, “Cinderella”, “The Jungle Book”), Vance Gerry (“Robin Hood”, “Hercules”, “The Great Mouse Detective”), Larry Clemmons (“The Jungle Book”, “Robin Hood”), David Michener (“The Fox and the Hound”, “The Great Mouse Detective”), Burny Mattinson (“The Fox and the Hound”, “The Great Mouse Detective”, “Beauty and the Beast”), Frank Thomas (an animator on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Fantasia”), Fred Lucky (a veteran storyboard artist), Ted Berman (“The Black Cauldron”), and Dick Sebast (a storyboard artist and occasional TV director), from the Margery Sharp series.

 

Rating: B-