Film Credits

Animation Screenplay by: Jim Cox, Karey Kirkpatrick, Byron Simpson, Joe Ranft

Directed by: Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel

Starring: Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, George C. Scott, John Candy, Tristan Rogers, Adam Ryen, Frank Welker

Review

The Rescuers Down Under is an entertaining adventure (if somewhat complex for kids) follow-up to Disney's popular 1977 animated feature, The Rescuers (sadly unreleased on home video). The Rescuers Down Under brings back mice Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart) and Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor), both of who are special agents of the Rescue Aid Society. Their mission this time around is to travel to Australia to find and rescue a young boy, Cody (Adam Ryen), held captive by ruthless poacher McLeach (George C. Scott). Helping Bernard and Miss Bianca on their assignment are Wilbur the albatross (John Candy) and Australian mouse Jake (Tristan Rogers). The film is a great deal of fun for kids and adults alike, and the animation style is lovely. Several segments also make use of computer animation, such as the opening titles and the villain's truck/tractor.

Walt Disney has released both CAV (#1142 CS, $39.99) and CLV (#1142 AS, $29.99) editions of The Rescuers Down Under, but as I've only seen the CAV version, that's the one I'll focus on here. The transfer is very faithful to the original look of the film, as is evident from the sharply defined image and a vivid color transfer. For those of you who enjoying studying animation technique (or even those of you just wanting to peek at a character design), the CAV still-frames are absolutely jitter-free. The folks at Disney, who are certainly not slouches when it comes to quality, have given The Rescuers Down Under an exciting audio mix, reproduced faithfully for the disc's CX-encoded digital Dolby surround stereo soundtrack. Bruce Broughton supplies the musical score. The two-disc CAV set was pressed by Sony DADC, is Table of Contents encoded and has 16 listed chapter markers.