The Rescuers Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

The next five films are probably just as forgotten as the wartime Disney movies. Not to say these movies are bad, they’re just forgotten. There isn’t really a quality drop here, they’re just as hit or miss as the rest of Disney’s catalogue. So, let’s start with The Rescuers, the most popular movie of this dark age of Disney. I’d never watched The Rescuers until now, this was the movie in the bronze age I was looking forward to the least. It’s about some mice rescuing a little girl, didn’t exactly sound like an engaging premise. I’m happy to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Rescuers is based on The Rescuers book series (duh), more specifically the first two books, “The Rescuers” and “Miss Bianca”, I’ve never read the books myself and didn’t even know they existed until I did some research on this movie. Apparently, Disney had plans to adapt more of the nine books in the series but after the death of Eva Gabor the woman who played Miss Bianca after the release of the sequel, they scrapped plans to continue the series. I’ll get to the sequel eventually, it is strangely a Disney Classic, unlike most other Disney sequels which were straight to DVD. Those sequels won’t be a part of this marathon (I’ll review them later though, I’ve got a ton of ideas for more marathons both movie, television, and video game-related). Anyway, let’s start with that plot, shall we?

The movie begins with the orphan girl Penny dropping a message into the ocean asking for help. This transitions into the opening credits where the song “The Journey” plays which only has 33 words in it but has the phrase “rescue me” uttered six times, four of those times are the phrase “who will rescue me”. If you like the phrase “rescue me” so much why don’t you just marry it? Just call the bloody song “Rescue Me”. On a side note I’m so excited for when they ditch opening credits, or as I like to call them, check my phone time.

The Rescue Aid Society, a secret organisation of mice who like helping people pick up the message and decide to help her. Here we hear the song “Rescue Aid Society” and it’s just a song telling us what’s the deal with the society, I didn’t even really remember it.

Miss Bianca decides that she wants to do the mission and picks the janitor Bernard to help her in her quest. Instead of saying “no a child’s life is at stake pick an actual member of the recuse society” they allow it.

Miss Bianca is kind and weirdly flirty for a mouse. If Robin Hood didn’t make you a furry maybe it was The Rescuers that did it for you. When mentioning Miss Bianca can I talk about the stupidest thing I’ve ever read? If you’ve read my previous reviews you know that I have a plot summary open when writing the reviews just to make sure I don’t forget to talk about anything. This time I checked the Miss Bianca Disney Wiki page because for some reason I thought Tim Burton drew her, I have no idea where I got that from, it’s wrong but that’s not the point. The point is this line taken directly from the Wiki “She’s very beautiful, elegant, and graceful, which sets her apart from other Disney females” has the person who wrote this article ever watched a Disney movie. That’s the personality of most women in Disney, especially until the Renaissance where they decided to start writing their women a bit better. I also love it how they use the word females instead of women, it’s all very neckbeardy. Anyway, I’m getting side-tracked again.

You can already guess Bernard’s character arc without watching the film, yes, he does start off as a janitor who doesn’t think very highly of himself but ends up as a competent member of The Rescue Aid Society. And yes, he and Miss Bianca do get together. It is kind of cute though.

The two mice end up going to Morningside Orphanage where Penny used to live where they hear about Madame Medusa, an evil lady who wanted to take Penny away for some reason. The mice go to Medusa’s pawnshop where they overhear that her and her partner Mr. Snoops are after a diamond called the Devil’s Eye in the Devil’s Bayou. Medusa heads on over to the Devil’s Bayou and the couple follows. The couple ends up catching a ride on the mice equivalent of a plane, an albatross named Orville. Whilst riding on Orville 😉 the couple ends up falling for one another (the two mice not the mice and the bird). This scene is pretty cute. The song “Tomorrow Is Another Day” plays throughout and it’s nice, it fits the scene and is definitely the best song in the movie. Medusa is just a poorly written version of Cruella de Vil.

When the couple lands they meet a drunk mouse named Luke and his wife Ellie Mae. They point the couple in the direction of Evinrude, a dragonfly who also runs a taxi service across the swamplands. Meanwhile, Penny is attempting to escape and the couple notice and give chase. They fail to help Penny escape and Penny is locked back up again. Here the song “Someone’s Waiting For You” plays and it’s alright. The two mice go up to her and tell her they’re there to rescue her. They make a plan to escape that night but don’t end up doing it (what was the bloody point) and they eventually decide that they are just going to find Medusa’s diamond so she shuts up about it and lets Penny go.

It turns out the reason Medusa needed Penny was because Penny was small enough to fit into the cave where the diamond was located. So, she goes into the cave with her two mice friends and it turns out the diamond was just a couple of feet from the entrance. Well done Penny. They get the diamond in an actual tense scene of the water rising (it’s not that tense because you can guarantee none of them are going to drown but it’s the tensest scene in the movie).

Medusa steals the diamond for herself hiding it in Penny’s teddy bear for some reason, I guess just so the protagonists can have a reason to still go after the villain. So, all of the mice in the swamp attack Medusa and the Rescuers escape with the diamond.

Penny donates the diamond to a museum instead of selling it and ends up being adopted by a loving family. Bernard becomes an official member of the Rescue Aid Society and is partnered up with Miss Bianca for many future adventures of which we will only be able to watch one of them because Miss Bianca’s voice actress died after the sequel.

On a completely unrelated note did you know that a topless woman appears in The Rescuers into two frames. When The Rescuers was made I guess they never thought you’d be able to pause a movie and that is the only way you’d see this. Off course it has been removed from later versions, but it was included in the original release. Yeah, I get it you’re a frustrated animator. Maybe take up yoga instead of putting porn in a children’s movie though.

I liked this film. Maybe after watching so many movies which were just songs connected by vague scenes it was nice to see something with a concrete start, middle, end and little bullshit in-between. A nice tight plot in contrast to all the flabby plots of past Disney movies. The characters are likeable and it looks alright, not much more to say. Next up The Fox and the Hound.

6 / 10