Unfortunately, on this occasion we are dealing with cliché, since the story of The Rescuers is deeply underwhelming. In my review of The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists!, I commented that "the difference between a convention and a cliché is the emotional response that surrounds it: if we are enjoying ourselves, it's a convention, and if not, it's a cliché." You'd have good cause for defending The Rescuers, up to a point, if it was sufficiently entertaining to overcome its overly familiar nature. The animators were clearly trying to replicate the brief scare involving the raven hiding in the skull, and then proceeding to drag it out for as long as possible. There are also clear nods to Snow White in the use of bluebirds and in particular the retrieving of the Devil's Eye from the skull. The shot of the star shining over the characters is taken from the ending of Pinocchio, and the wide shots of the deer roaming seem to have been lifted straight from Bambi. The imagery in The Rescuers borrows just as obviously from past glories. Snoops and the alligators fill in for Horace and Jasper, while on the heroes' side the community of yokels are effectively standing in for the Colonel, Sergeant Tibbs and the other dogs along the Twilight Bark. Her motivation is slightly different, but she's still essentially an over-the-top pantomime bad guy who delights in the pain of others. The most obvious example of this blatant rehashing is Medusa, who is essentially a badly-drawn version of Cruella DeVil. But like its predecessor Robin Hood, this film is replete with examples of the company shamelessly ripping itself off, raiding its back catalogue of recognisable scenes and characters, and attempting unsuccessfully to pass them off as something new. We have gotten used to Disney using the same voice actors on multiple productions - for instance, Betty Lou Gerson voices both Cruella DeVil and Madame Mim (The Sword in the Stone). What's equally depressing is how derivative the film is. But instead we get a series of matte paintings, decently drawn in their own right but with no sense of urgency to them. The opening credits could have been effective if they showed Penny's message in a bottle floating all the way across the world. Despite the very best intentions of John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman and Art Stevens, the colours still look pale and faded, and characters such as Madame Medusa aren't drawn with believable proportions. From an aesthetic point of view this allows for a smoother style of animation, which suits the characters particularly when it comes to their movement.īut despite this incremental improvement, the animation as a whole still looks tired. In the sixteen years between the two films, the Xeroxing technique had been refined to pick up greater detail in the original drawings, as well as enabling multiple colours to be replicated. Should they try something radically different, and move the Disney brand forward at the risk of losing their current audience? Or should they seek to consolidate the symbols and motifs that had brought the company success, at the cost of blatantly re-treading old ground? Unsurprisingly, they opted for the latter - and The Rescuers is one of the more mediocre fruits of their decision.įrom a technical standpoint, The Rescuers is a subtle improvement on the style of animation first utilised on 101 Dalmatians. This new generation of animators and managers were faced with a dilemma. The passing of Walt Disney, and the retirement of Golden Age directors like Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, had left it in the hands of a new generation, who were taking on an established brand rather than blazing a trail of their own. Disney spent the 1970s in the doldrums, both financially and creatively.
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