The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

(Disney Streaming, August 2021) Renaissances are not necessarily binary — it’s not because suddenly you get one hit that you’re on your way back, and sometimes it takes a while to get on track. Looking at the history of the Disney Animation Studio, for instance, everyone can agree that their Renaissance was sparked by 1989’s The Little Mermaid and everyone remembers 1991’s The Lion King. But in-between them? Not-so-fondly-remembered sequel (the first one in their history, notwithstanding the more recent hubbub about Frozen II) The Rescuers Down Under, taking its characters on an Australian adventure capitalizing on the Crocodile Dundee-led success of all things Australian in the late 1980s. As someone who’s not that fond of The Rescuers in the first place, I’m already not starting from a place of goodwill. That goodwill was further extinguished by a rather long and dull setup delaying the entrance of the titular Rescuers by nearly half an hour, and then a story that simply didn’t do all that much with the Australian setting. While the film feels slightly less dark than the original (which was remarkably dark for a Disney film), it’s still not a lot of fun and surprisingly mean-spirited at times. Put all of that together and you don’t exactly end with one of the hidden gems of Disney Animation Studios’ history. No wonder The Rescuers Down Under didn’t get much notice back then (although opening on the same day as Home Alone wasn’t a good idea) and gets scarcely more than a side glance when Disney historians talk about the transformation of the studio as the 1980s closed. It’s a lower-tier Disney, not helped in the least by its proximity to much-better movies.