3 November 2000 | La Gremlin

10 | Underappreciated Gem

I have always been one of the, maybe, eight or nine big fans of this movie and I have only one small question about it.



WHY CAN'T THEY MAKE MORE LIKE THIS???



If you have not seen this movie yet, you must. It's the first Disney movie to use fully rendered CGI backgrounds throughout and you definately get the sense that the animators wanted to play with this new method. What I'm getting at is that some of you may want to down some motion sickness medicine first.



There are *no* song and dance numbers. Reason being that this is a surprisingly dark, more emotionally complex story for a Disney movie. They went out on a limb and chose not to break the tone up too much.



This is the number two Lost Disney Movie (number one, without a doubt, is "the Hunchback of Notre Dame", which I also love). It's own creators barely acknowledge its existance. The very best evidence of this is on the new video release box's plot summary, where a MAJOR character's gender is misidentified.



On the other hand, I sort of enjoy the idea of a "cult" Disney movie. Instead of marketing "Down Under" to death, Disney can only be accused of the opposite mistake.



So, anyway, here I go again running to this movie's defence. I'll tackle the one major critisism of it before I go. Many critics were expecting another "Rescuers". In my humble opinion, these two movies are two entirely different animals. The original "Rescuers" is an example of where Disney was in the sixties and seventies. "Down Under" is a time capsule of late eighties, early nineties Disney. In other words, you can't really say that one is better than the other as the only thing they have in common are three characters (what I'm getting at is that this should be thought of more as "Rescue Aid Society: the Next Generation").



By the way, I've got an idea that I'm just going to throw out to the proverbial wolves here. Why not make more "Rescuers" movies instead of sequels to Disney movies where follow-up stories make no sence? They are sitting on one heck of a potential franchise here. Just thought I'd let you know.