#23 The Rescuers

There are more than a few similarities to be found between The Rescuers and 101 Dalmatians: both are centered around an abduction, and both involve animal protagonists on a rescue mission (though the animals in The Rescuers are considerably more anthropomorphized than the dalmatians, their society is still "secret," thus avoiding the problems of The Aristocats). The villain Madam Medusa even bears similarities to Cruella De Vil, both being raging divas who abuse their henchmen (De Vil was actually originally intended to be the villain of The Rescuers). Nonetheless, Dalmatians is decidedly the better film, as The Rescuers in many ways fails to live up to its own potential.

With a story about two mice embarking on a mission to rescue a girl from an insane woman in a swamped river boat in the bayou, the film feels like it should be a lot more exciting than it is, and while there's certainly some fun to be had in it, it definitely feels lacking. Interestingly, one of the biggest hindrances to the film is its sound design and music, which feel oddly underproduced. Especially considering that many earlier Disney films have a nearly nonstop soundtrack, the total lack of background music in many scenes is jarring; it's not often one encounters total silence in a film, let alone a childrens' film, which usually feel compelled to have at least something going on to maintain the audience's attention. This lack of music drags down several scenes that should be tense and dramatic, resulting in an almost hollow feel to the production. The songs, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" and "Someone's Waiting For You," meanwhile, feel like 70's soft-rock tracks foisted onto the film (especially since they're not sung by anyone in the film, simply playing over the action).

Sound problems aside, the film also suffers to a degree from occasional animation problems (reminiscent of those present in The Sword in the Stone at points). While the voice acting is alright for the most part, it's not spectacular either; the same can be said of the background work. While The Rescuers is definitely not a bad film (a sequence of Bernard and Bianca attempting to escape from Medusa's crocodiles in a pipe organ is exactly the kind of inspired fun the film could use more of), it's definitely not one of Disney's best either.