What A Cartoon Movie! - The Rescuers Down Under

'The Rescuers' had colour direction? I did a double feature and when 'Down Under' started, I felt like a man who crawled out of the desert and just found water. Granted the colours are the hyper-bright mish-mash of EVERY colour that 90s Disney loved ("Look what CAPS can do!") but I'll take that over the dour, murky, mud-brown and depression blue of the original.

Joshua Marchant

No, you're right about the dropped audio in that one section. Maybe the Mum's dialogue was on only the right or left channel and the clip didn't pick that up for some reason?

Joshua Marchant

There's a much better episode of Regular Show where Mordecai and Rigby go down under with an aboriginal art hallucination scene

Dylan

Understandable Disney couldn't afford Paul Hogan in 1988, but why not Bryan Brown?!? He's Australian, and just hot off co-starring in 'Cocktail'! Also Henry, you might not want to hug a koala. Apart from their massive claws, they tend to piss on people and many of the poor things are infected with chlamydia. Hug a wombat instead! They're just as big, sleepy and cuddly :)

Amy B

haven't watched it yet but the first thing i was going to hope is that they would call it be it's actual name, glad to hear it.

As and Australian I'm really happy that you called it uluru instead of ayers rock lots of people normally don't care and try and call it by its proper name

Sean Downes

Rewatching it now and wondering how Bob reacts to such a bird-centric movie.

Paul Serna

Most of my comments mirror both of yours. (I actually cheered when Henry called Prince and the Pauper boring.) The only thing that really stuck with me from a childhood viewing was the restaurant and the waiters, which still remains the highlight of the film (along with the albatross getting sodomized by the nurse mice). I was actually startled by how little happens and how many loose ends are left loose when I rewatched it a few months ago. Casting Eddie Albert would’ve been a bit too much and like *modern* Disney movies… With Eva Gabor solo, they’re at least going for her abilities and “European” appeal, rather than actively whoring, “Hey! You’ll like this if you liked Green Acres!” You were right to call out, “Medusa should’ve just been Cruella”. Milt Kahl was VERY jealous of Marc Davis animating Cruella in Dalmatians, so I think the over-the-top Medusa stuff is him justifying the “wrong” of that earlier film. It’s a tough call, because both The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under are so squarely middle-of-the-road children’s movies, but yes, I will give the edge to the sequel. If only because the animation in the first one is so masturbatory (when I went for the animators’ draft, it was no shock the most falsely acted scenes were John Pomeroy’s; Ollie Johnston was a nice guy but that self-caricature cat is so self-indulgent) and it didn’t have John Candy. (I will grant the original had better art direction and color, and did give the titular characters more to do.) Speaking of - holy SHIT, Bob, go get some SCTV stat. Seriously. No wonder you talk about SNL so much. If you had any inkling of what SCTV did, you wouldn’t give SNL the time of day.

Thad Komorowski

"At Least an Ewok," Billy Barty's autobiography, absolutely killed me. Thank you.

Davidandwaffles

as a kid it was either this or Fern Gully on "90's animated film about Australian wildlife" and this one won out for not having a rapping Robin Williams fruitbat. I definitely appreciate it as the oddity it is at its point in Disney's history and the stage it set for the renaissance even if it's not their greatest output. some beautiful sequences through, would have loved to have seen it on a big screen.

Blake R.

Redownload and you’ll see it has been fixed. Apologies- Henry

Talking Simpsons

Was it just me or did anyone else not hear the moms voice, when they played the clip to hear the difference in the accents? One thing that I thought of when they mentioned Cody was possibly going to be an Aboriginal, could you imagine the scene of McLeach pointing the gun directly at Cody to get him out of the hole, and then he locks him in a cage; it would have come across very differently if Cody was Aboriginal.

Seth

I was definitely one of those kids that saw this movie on VHS, not a theater. My sister and I could usually count on getting one movie at Christmas and this was the one we got that year. I knew nothing about it, despite being a pretty avid TV viewer, and I had never seen the original and would not for several years. We watched our VHS a lot though, and I did show it my kids maybe a year or two ago and was happy to see it's totally fine. Great character animation, some beautiful shots, and a good villain. Cody does kind of suck though and is pretty forgettable. When my grandparents retired they wanted to do some traveling and Australia was one of the destinations. Actually, I think it was first the trip my Nana went without my grandfather because he had a stroke in early 92 that ended his traveling days prematurely. One of my aunts must have went with her, but anyway, she brought back all of the grandsons a boomerang. I had some experience with plastic boomerangs and other toy ones and was always left disappointed, so I thought an actual wooden one from Australia would actually work and return to me after being thrown. Nope. I threw that thing in my backyard and promptly hit the gas grill and took a nice chunk out of it. In truth, it was likely intended for decoration since it had some nice engravings on it, but in my experience, boomerangs are frauds! Given this was released in 1990, I can see why it's included as part of the Disney Renaissance. I don't really care enough to put forth a full-throated argument on the subject, but I would certainly entertain an argument for this film to not be included since it went into development shortly after the completion of Oliver & Company and before the success of The Little Mermaid was realized. And because it doesn't include two individuals synonymous with that era: Menken and Ashman. No songs! It's pretty crazy they were willing to try that format again since The Black Cauldron crashed and burned, but here we are. As a kid, I liked the film, but as an adult it's hard not to just look at it as an experiment or glorified tech demo that sits outside of the Disney Renaissance more as a curiosity, or a footnote, than anything else.

Joe Hodgson

It's funny (though welcome) that modern streaming versions of this film don't replace the old Disney logo with the CG one, because that logo is, according to most online sources I've found, directed by Mike Gabriel! Given how long it's lasted (16 years and counting) and how many films it's appeared in front of, it's the by far the most watched piece of animation Gabriel has ever directed. While Billy Barty did not play an Ewok, he WAS in another George Lucas production: He played the High Aldwin (basically a wizard) in the 1988 fantasy film Willow.

Harry Thornton

If the run time for an episode comes out as 4:19 or 4:22 or something, do you purposely re-edit it to be 4:20? Because that's what I would do.

Paul

Quick audio issue note: around the 2:30 mark, the intro music fades in louder than Henry 😅

G