The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

This movie is why I wanted Giant birds to still exist… and I desperately wanted to be friends with one.

Before this movie, Disney had only thought of doing a sequel once. Funny thing was that it was still a “Rescuers” sequel, although more direct. It would have followed Penny, and I honestly don’t know if it would have included our mice friends Bernard and Bianca. This movie never came to fruition, and any leftovers of that movie were fashioned into the move “Oliver and Company.”

I will be the first to say that I am happy that they decided to go in a different direction. Without it, we might have never gotten this movie. It’s small and stuffed between two mega hits in the Disney Canon, but I, for one, LOVE this movie. People glaze over it or have never heard of it, and in reality, that’s not really fair. This movie deserves to be known. It’s not as memorable as Beauty and the Beast, sure, but it’s still good!

The Rescuers Down Under centers once again around our mice friends from the first movie, Bernard and Bianca, members of a mouse organization called the Rescue Aid Society. This time, they’re investigating the kidnapping of a boy named Cody by a Poacher named McLeach in Australia. Turns out Cody knows the location of the extremely rare Great Golden Eagle named Marahute, who McLeach is trying to capture. It’s up to Bernard, Bianca and some new friends to rescue Cody and save Marahute from a horrible end.

What’s so great about this movie is that it’s not just a rehash of the first Rescuers movie. It’s actually a vast improvement. We have a better story, way better characters, beautiful animation, humor, and a unique location. I mean really – Disney needs to go back to Australia!!!

Many of our characters are new, but our two main characters Bernard and Bianca are the same (I guess Cody could be argued to be a main character too – he has a lot more screen time than Penny ever had). How do they compare to the first? In all honesty, they’re pretty much the same. Bernard has somehow lost his triscodecaphobia and is much less superstitious, but still isn’t super confident. He spends the entire movie trying to come up with a way to ask Miss Bianca to marry him, but something or someone always gets in the way. Miss Bianca, on the other hand, is exactly the same as the first movie. She’s motivated and not afraid of anything. She’s willing to do anything to save this kid, and nothing is going to stop her. It’s nice to see their relationship move forward, but it’s nice to see they still have the same chemistry as they did in the first.

Love these two: Look how worried Bernard is!

Acting as a threat to Bernard (and half the reason he feels he can’t ask Bianca to marry him) is Jake, our Australian mouse (he’s a species of hopping mouse, FYI, see below… yes the Biology dork in me totally looked it up). He’s struck by Bianca’s beauty and flirts with her the entire movie, making Bernard very uncomfortable to the point he begins to worry that Bianca doesn’t love him. Jake, on the other hand, is just a flirt. He’s actually a nice guy and completely respects Bernard, even if he does think he’s a bit “soft.” He, on the other hand, lives in the outback and knows how to wrangle any critter he can to help them on their way. He’s a good if not strange addition to their party, but a needed character I feel in this movie. It’s nice to have our duo become a trio.

Yep… That’s totally Jake. I’m so proud of myself!

The last character on the mouse side of our story is Wilbur, an Albatross and Orville’s brother from the first movie. Voiced by John Candy, he is just as great and funny as you would expect John Candy to be in a Disney movie. After landing in Australia, he pulls his back and spends part of his time in a mouse hospital (the most crazy/hilarious place ever), and the rest of the movie attempting to find Bernard and Bianca and help them. He ends up stumbling upon Marahute’s nest and the eggs after McLeach has captured everyone but Bernard, and the mouse gives him the job of sitting on the eggs. He’s a smaller character than the three mice, but a better character than Orville ever was in the first one.

So while we have the story line going with our mice trying to find our kidnapped child, we actually have another running storyline with Cody and McLeach. The movie actually starts out like this. We meet Cody as he rushes off into the outback to answer a call from his outback friends (aka: a kangaroo) that Marahute is stuck in a poacher’s net. He goes and rescues her, the bird thanks him in the most amazing way possible, and he suddenly has a friend for life. She takes him to see her eggs, he finds out the daddy eagle was killed, and he’s off home only to fall into McLeach’s trap.

When I was a kid, I would have dropped everything to be Cody. Think about it: This kid can talk to animals, he rescues them, flies on a giant eagle, and gets to be outside all day. That was my dream. Five minutes into this movie, and I was hooked. But all that aside, how’s Cody as an actual character? Well… he’s MUCH better than Penny. This kid is smart, has a good heart, but isn’t willing to give up his friends and their safety. He never really seems scared to be in McLeach’s care, and in fact acts out yelling and screaming, claiming the rangers are going to get him. He knows this guy is going to get it in the end, even if it seems hopeless. He’s selfless and loves Marahute and wants to do anything to protect her and her eggs. Is this realistic? Maybe…? I dunno. Would a tough little kid stay tough in the hands of a kidnapper? Penny sure did in the first one too. It’s honestly probably because Disney didn’t want to portray kidnapped kids realistically (aka: TERRIFIED). They needed them to be strong. Cody is definitely strong in the face of danger.

Now we have McLeach. If there was ever a dumb villain in a Disney movie, this guy would be it. He’s a poacher and seems smart on how to do that, but doesn’t really have the smarts on anything else. He’s a one trick pony, but at the same time they found lots of ways to make him entertaining. He’s not a “scary” villain at all, but he is causing our main character problems. He doesn’t value nature as Cody does, and sees animals as objects, not as individuals. Except Joanna, his Goana. Yeah… It took me years and watching Steve Irwin to make that connection and finally laugh at the joke Disney was making with that name. Joanna is the best. She’s his sidekick, and she’s just as evil but just as dumb as he is. She offers comic relief to a movie that wasn’t hurting on it before, but it’s refreshing. She’s a funny character and she never even has to utter a word.

This picture shows their relationship so perfectly…

This is one of Disney’s only attempts at an environmental piece, and in all honesty, they do a pretty good job. It came out before Ferngully, so no one can accuse them of copying the “fad.” It doesn’t shove its message in your face, but it puts it at a level that kids can understand. It gets them to care about animals and realize that hunting these animals (Poaching. Hunting is different) is bad. It gets them to think about what will happen to the eggs if the mommy eagle dies. It introduces us to a fictional bird that seems so real you almost wish or wonder if it ever was. It’s a different kind of environmental message than “protect the forests,” and I think I kinda like that. How many stories have an anti-poaching message? It’s super unique, and I love it.

The animation on this movie is beautiful. I don’t know if something happened between The Little Mermaid and this movie, but wow. Don’t get me wrong, I like the animation in the Little Mermaid, but this just… it’s such an improvement. Some of this scenery is gorgeous. Some of these scenes are gorgeous. The CGI flowers in the beginning are pretty good for 1990. The animation in general on the mice is much better than the original. The flight with Marahute is definitely one of my favorite pieces of Disney animation, even if it does seem to go on for a little too long.

But it’s just so pretty!!

I do have a few criticisms of this movie, but I’m not going to do paragraphs on them, because their either just my personal issues or things that really don’t need a ton of expansion. Instead, I’m just going to list them:

~ There’s a scene in McLeach’s where Cody is locked in a room with a bunch of other caught animals. He attempts to help them escape, but McLeach finds him and pulls him out. Did anyone else ever wonder what happened to these animals after McLeach tumbles off a waterfall? did they just die there?? I want to know!!

WHAT HAPPENED TO FRANK?!?

~I talk about how great this animation is but one part that really bugs me is when they’re all in McLeach’s weird truck cage. The bars are so close together it looks awful. I know it’s the design of the cage so small animals don’t get out, but I dunno. It almost always gave me a headache in certain scenes.

~ There’s also a scene where McLeach and Joanna find Marahute’s nest and Joanna goes down to eat the eggs after the mom’s been caught. Everyone else is caught except Bernard, who somehow in the span of 5 seconds manages to hide the real eggs and replace them with rocks. Is this mouse super strong now??

Those are all stupid criticisms really, but every time I watch this movie I catch them and wonder about them. If that’s all I can find wrong about this movie, though, that’s not bad. I am sad they didn’t continue with Bernard and Bianca. I’m sad that this movie came out when it did between the movies it did. It gets shoved to the wayside when in fact it’s a wonderful little movie. It’s not a huge musical or a fairy tale. It doesn’t have a princess or a prince, but it’s memorable.

So I say this: Please Disney. Do another movie in Australia. I would say do another rescuers movie, but without Eva Gabor, it wouldn’t be the same. These movies, however, are fun. Let’s follow another two mice in the R.A.S. You have a franchise that you didn’t expand on. In this world now where Franchises are the way to go, you have one that I bet would do well. Don’t go crazy, but explore it. You had a good thing going with this one.

If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If you loved the first one, I bet you’ll like this one even more. I actually saw this one before I saw the first, and in that order, the first was kinda a let down. This movie really is that much better. Watch it yourself and see what you think.

I give The Rescuers Down Under (1990) a 3.7 out of 5. Has a few random plot issues, but generally good, solid fun.

Next up: Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)

“There are worlds within worlds, Chrysta. Everything in our world is connected by the delicate strands of the web of life, which is a balance between the forces of destruction and the magical forces of creation.”

 There was a period in my childhood where I feel like all I wanted to watch was this movie. It honestly may have only lasted a week, but as I look back on it, it seemed like months. If anyone knows me, my obsession with this movie would make perfect sense. Love of animals and the nature/the environment are ingrained in my bones, and this movie has everything to satisfy that. Well, I did eventually grow out of my “must see ferngully” phase, and I didn’t see this movie for a long while, until after college. I was at an internship at an Outdoor Education Center with 11 other interns. This movie so happened to be in one of the residence houses, so we put it on. It was just as good as an adult, so of course I figured it just had to be one I needed to buy. I feel to our generation, it’s a classic. But does it deserve that label?

 In a short answer, Yes, it does. Despite its flaws and its incredibly dated feel, it is a good movie. It teaches a good lesson but isn’t in your face about it, compared to some other movies. It’s smart about how it goes about telling it’s environmentally minded story, mixing in the good with the bad. Kids don’t have to sit there and get eco-phobia from this one movie. It doesn’t scare kids into doing what’s best for the environment. It has its moments of being preachy, but in a good way, and in a subtle way. If that makes any sense.

 I find it interesting and funny that this little movie made by an Australian film company and only grossed 32 million worldwide became such a household name. I felt like everyone saw this movie. I feel like everyone still knows this movie. People compare every single other environmental movie that comes out to this one all the time (we got a lot of that when Avatar came out). How did this little movie become the pillar to measure up to? It certainly wasn’t the first, I’m sure, but it’s good.

 If you don’t know the story here’s a very quick rundown: in Australia there’s a rainforest called Ferngully that’s inhabited by fairies who take care of the forest. One fairy, Crysta, an apprentice to the shawoman Mage, is interested in their folktales and longs to see a human. She sees smoke rising in the distance one day and heads that direction, finding humans and a giant machine that eats trees. To save the life of one of the kids marking the trees to be cut down, she accidentally shrinks him to her size. He learns about the forest and about respect of the trees, and together they must stop the leveler from destroying Ferngully, which is now being run by an evil spirit, Hexxus.

 You can tell the development team thought a lot about the storyline and dialogue in this movie. It has some of the best for a kids movie. It has very thoughtful lines, very good exchanges between characters, and the humor is spot on for kids (I even still find myself laughing extremely hard at some places). They knew what they wanted to convey in their story and the way in which they wanted to do it. They succeeded.

 Where they didn’t succeed, however, is in the characters. I have complained about characters a lot in my reviews. That’s kinda because I guess you could call me a character snob. I LOVE characters. You can give me a really crappy movie with a crappy or extremely horrible plot, and I will still love it. Why? If the characters are good and interesting, I’ll deal with pretty much anything. My mind is immediately drawn to good characters, complex characters, and characters with good backstories. That’s why I find myself sucked into complicated shows and movies half the time that have amazing characters but the plot lines tend to be cliche, boring, or flat out ridiculous (I’m one of the few people who really understands LOST and is not pissed off by the end – I loved it actually).

 The characters are very one dimensional. They spent all this time on the plot and seemed to just pick the most common characters they could find. We have the old wise lady who seems to know everything and gives advice in riddles. Our protagonist Crysta is very Ariel from the little mermaid with a bit less attitude: she’s curious and naive but has a good heart. Zak is a clueless guy who must be taught the ways of the forest. He’s a bit bland, but at least you can tell the difference in his character in the beginning and the end. At least he really does learn something. 

 The only other sort of character they spend any time on developing even a little bit is Batty. Oh yes, we have to talk about him. Batty is a fruit bat that escaped from a lab where he was a test animal. He’s voiced by Robin Williams, pre-genie days. The voices for this were recorded in 1991, so it was literally right before Aladdin. Thank GOD it was before Aladdin. I can only guess what it would have been like if it had been after, and it would have been awful. In this movie, Robin Williams is actually funny!** Batty has the best lines, and yeah, he’s in there for comic relief, but it’s actually funny without going crazy pop-culture-y.  If anything, he actually teaches us stuff; things I never caught as a kid. He actually gives us what a bat is (“I’m a placental flying mammal; if you can’t tell, I’m a bat!”) and even at one point gives us the family name (Pteropodidae) as a joke. This writing is awesome. I remember laughing my butt of at Batty, and I still do. 

 There are a few random details with the story that honestly I would have changed. They really try to force a whole romance thing on Crysta and Zak, and they even try to throw in a triangle with this other fairy Pip who I guess likes her too? But there’s literally no build up, and honestly it seems out of left field; there were no romantic feelings, then all of a sudden… wow! We’re in an underwater cave and staring into each others eyes! It would have been much better if they had just let Crysta be a friend and teacher, and maybe they should have made Pip a brother or something. I don’t know, just not what they did.

 Ok, let’s talk about the villain, voiced by the ever awesome Tim Curry. Hexxus, as I understand it, is an evil spirit that rose up from the bowels of the earth long ago, bringing destruction on the forest. He was sealed inside a tree that the leveler eats and is released. When I was a kid I thought this monster was pollution (which I guess means they hit it right – I know what the bad guy to the environment is), but as an adult I’m seeing it a bit more complicated than that. If he came into being long ago, he can’t be pollution, he has to be something more sinister. Did a volcano erupt and cause destruction on the rainforest and this thing is like that spirit? And why is he so keen to destroy the forest? Maybe these things are answered and I’m not paying attention, but I would have liked a lot more depth in the mythology of this whole land and the fairies. It would have been cool.

 The only other thing I do want to talk about at a bit of length is the end. Mage (the old shawoman/fairy) sacrifices herself and disappears and turns into glowing light that gets transferred to each of the fairies. I’m guessing this is giving them the power to understand the forest? It’s not quite clear. Anyway, Crysta, Zak and Batty go to fight the leveler and Hexxus and Zak succeeds in… turning off the machine. yeah. Apparently it was that easy. Hexxus gets sucked back into the leveler (there’s no more pollution for him to feed on) and it seems all is good. Really?!? Is that really how they’re going to defeat…. HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS BACK!!!!

 Anyone remember this? After everything seems all well and good, Hexxus somehow manages to come back to life even though the machine is off and not only does he come back as a weird cloud/oil monster thing, but a SKELETON DRIPPING WITH FIRE AND OOZE!! That is freaking scary!! How did this not scar me as a child? After everyone is done picking their jaws up off the floor and calming the tears of young children, Crysta defeats him by taking a tree seed and he eats her. The tree starts to sprout out of Hexxus, and the rest of the fairies help it grow and the scary monster spirit thing turns into a tree. 

 So wait… they already took away all the energy that Hexxus needed by turning off the leveler, it comes back, and it’s a TREE that stops this thing? I mean I know they’re trying to make a point, but really?? This thing seems super powerful once it gets to full power, and a TREE stops it? Yeah. Am I the only one not ok with this plot point? It confuses me.

 Other thoughts on the movie that are super random and don’t require an entire paragraph each: 

 ~ This movie is REALLY dated. Like, early 90s tubular dude cool dated. They quite literally use that phrasology. 

~ The animation for a little indie Australian movie is really impressive. It’s colorful and it made me want to go there. I’ve heard the crew spent time in the Australian rainforest, so I say good job, it was money well spent (even the bit of CGI isn’t bad!)

~ The songs are super-forgettable. I’m a bit sad I never remembered them, because you’d think Robin Williams rapping would have been memorable.

~ Ralph Eggleston was a storyboard artist! I actually watched the credits and saw his name! If you don’t know who that is, he is a big Pixar guy. This was apparently his first job. He’s worked on tons of pixar movies.

~ I actually kinda like that even though this story is the Pocahontas/white guy comes in and saves the day movie, it doesn’t really happen like that. Yeah, Zak helps and turns off the leveler, but in the end it was Crysta and the fairies who ultimately defeated Hexxus. 

 Ferngully is all in all a great movie. I’m not really a big fan of the characters, but I feel I would have absolutely LOVED this movie had they developed them and the mythology of the place a bit more. It could have been so much more. There was so much more potential than they did, which is actually saying a lot. I would recommend it most definitely. It’s a good environmental and educational movie.

 I give Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992) 3.75 stars out of 5. 

 Up next: let’s continue with environmental movies and watch Happy Feet (2006). These will be fun to compare… 

 

 **in case you can’t tell, I’m not a fan of the Genie. But we’ll get to him…