The Rescuers Down Under is an American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and first released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution on November 16, 1990. The 29th film in the Disney Animated Canon, the film is the sequel (Disney's second for an animated feature) to the 1977 animated classic The Rescuers, which was based on the novels by Margery Sharp.
This film, The Three Caballeros, Fantasia 2000, and Winnie the Pooh, are the only Disney sequels that are part of the Disney Animated Canon, until Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, and Moana 2, as they were all produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The film takes place in the Australian Outback and belongs to the era known as the Disney Renaissance (1989-1999), which began with The Little Mermaid the year before this sequel was released. It was also the second Disney sequel to have been shown in theaters. The biggest reason this failed at the box office was because it was released around the same time as Home Alone (which also had the late John Candy), Rocky V, and Edward Scissorhands (Home and Edward were ironically purchased by Disney when they purchased 20th Century Studios (then called Fox)). Disney would not return to producing animated features without including musical numbers in the canon until the early 2000's.
The film is known as Bernard and Bianca in the Land of the Kangaroos in countries where the phrase "Down Under" is not as well known or is deemed as offensive. It also became the first fully digital feature film for Disney and the world.
Another Rescuers movie was planned for 1996 but after the deaths of Eva Gabor and John Candy, this and all future Rescuers movies were scrapped. Also, the disappointing box-office performance of the film discouraged the Walt Disney Company from releasing later sequels theatrically, with the exception of Return to Never Land and The Jungle Book 2, both of which proved to be box office successes.
Rating[]
The Rescuers Down Under received a G rating by the MPAA. This is the twenty-eighth Disney animated film to be rated as such in the US after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid.
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Trivia[]
- This is the second Disney traditionally animated feature film to not feature any musical numbers or any characters singing (except for Wilbur briefly singing along to Black Slacks at one point, McLeach briefly singing Home on the Range and a crocodile version of The Crawdad Song, and Frank singing a part of Waltzing Matilda) after The Black Cauldron.
- This is Disney's second animated sequel after The Three Caballeros, which is a sequel to Saludos Amigos.
- The Rescuers is also the second Disney animated movie to become a franchise.
- The Rescuers Down Under is the only sequel to be released during the Disney Renaissance (not counting Toy Story 2, nor Direct-to-Video sequels by Disneytoon Studios).
- On the Disney Jr. broadcast, three scenes from the film were censored;
- The scene in which Percival McLeach asks Cody if Marahute was hiding at either Satan's Ridge or Nightmare Canyon was omitted due to the aforementioned location's intimidating name.
- The second clip of McLeach throwing a knife next to Cody was replaced with a repeated clip of Joanna splitting her cracker into halves, due to it being violent.
- Also, during the hospital scene with Wilbur, the clip showing a chainsaw was removed, possibly either due to it being too scary for younger children or to prevent from inspiring copycat incidents of children trying dangerous machines at home.
- The read along and novel books do not show us the scenes of Joanna's waving, McLeach's falling, Bernard's engagement to Bianca, or Wilbur left on the nest. This might be to avoid spoilers if some people have not seen the film yet.
- This was the last Disney film to be theatrically accompanied by a half-hour featurette until 2017's Pixar film Coco (which was theatrically accompanied by the Frozen short sequel Olaf's Frozen Adventure).
- This is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film to completely use the digital ink and paint method of animation, courtesy of the CAPS system.
- This was the last Disney animated film to have its Latin-American dub to be released in Spain as Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to have a European Spain dub nearly a year later after Down Under's release in Spain.
- The film's Japanese dub, released in 1996, was done in late 1994 or early 1995, and was the last of Yasuo Yamada's (Bernard) Disney dubbing roles. Yamada died in March 1995 of a brain hemorrhage and recorded his lines before his passing, while he was reeling from hypokalemia.
- This is the only Disney Animated Canon film in the early 1990s to not be a Disney Princess film, something that both Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin are. Ironically, the previous Disney Animated Canon film that came before this one, The Little Mermaid, is also a Disney Princess film.