It's worthwhile comparing the opening credits to "The Rescuers" with the opening credits to its sequel (released thirteen years later). The sequel's opening is detailed, tastefully colourful and full of movement - it leaps and bounds through the Australian landscape, and its dominant mood is exuberance. The original is anything but exuberant. ITS opening credits take place over a series of sombre seascape drawings - still drawings. These credits could not possibly have been more cheaply made; but they have their own charm and effect.
There is something fitting about the grey world of "The Rescuers". A pair of mice (professional rescuers) receive a message from a young orphan girl who is being held captive by ... and so on. This is not a chandelier-swinging rescue story. The mice are tiny and largely helpless in a world of big things; and if they succeed at all it must be by quietly waiting their chance in the shadows.
The mice, by the way, are adorable. Really, they are. Largely it's the voices that do it - Eva Gabor as a rich Hungarian, and Bob Newhart as a shy American floor-sweeper. Neither is self-consciously cute. Each is an innocent but not a child. When the story concentrates on them rather than the Miss MacGuffin they are rescuing it is at its most enjoyable.
There is no doubt, though that the Disney studio was exhausted at the time it made this movie. There is one superb piece of animation - Madam Medusa, the villainess, perhaps the high point of animator Milt Kahl's career. Other character animation here and there is good too. But the spear-characters of the story have been done with what looks like almost no effort; and many scenes look as if they belong on television. Scale is often ignored (there is a turtle slightly smaller than the mice) - and this is a SERIOUS problem in this kind of fantasy. Overall there is a feeling of deep weariness.
It's worth seeing for the mice, though.
There is something fitting about the grey world of "The Rescuers". A pair of mice (professional rescuers) receive a message from a young orphan girl who is being held captive by ... and so on. This is not a chandelier-swinging rescue story. The mice are tiny and largely helpless in a world of big things; and if they succeed at all it must be by quietly waiting their chance in the shadows.
The mice, by the way, are adorable. Really, they are. Largely it's the voices that do it - Eva Gabor as a rich Hungarian, and Bob Newhart as a shy American floor-sweeper. Neither is self-consciously cute. Each is an innocent but not a child. When the story concentrates on them rather than the Miss MacGuffin they are rescuing it is at its most enjoyable.
There is no doubt, though that the Disney studio was exhausted at the time it made this movie. There is one superb piece of animation - Madam Medusa, the villainess, perhaps the high point of animator Milt Kahl's career. Other character animation here and there is good too. But the spear-characters of the story have been done with what looks like almost no effort; and many scenes look as if they belong on television. Scale is often ignored (there is a turtle slightly smaller than the mice) - and this is a SERIOUS problem in this kind of fantasy. Overall there is a feeling of deep weariness.
It's worth seeing for the mice, though.