Thread by @AlexandraErin

Hello, hello! It is time for the triumphant/abundant return of Drunk Disney! This week's selection is The Rescuers (1977) - hey, I remembered to mention what movie I'm doing in the first tweet this time. Go me!

You all know how this works, unless you don't, in which case here it is: in order to supplement my income while I'm having a hard time doing more serious work due to vision/headache problems, I am rewatching or watching for the first time various old Disney movies, while drinking

It generally takes me two afternoons to get through a given feature presentation, owing to the fact that this is a not-quite-livetweet - I have way too much to say about each scene, especially when I'm drinking.

Voluntary contributions FROM VIEWERS LIKE YOU go to groceries and other similar household expenses for our house and also my aging parents-out-law, who live nearby and are dependent on us for most of their shopping and other needs.

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I mention it is also my birthday in just under two weeks, so I'm hoping to help secure the means of an appropriate celebration under the circumstances of these, The Quarantimes.

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I usually start by discussing my level of familiarity with the selection - whether it's a nostalgic rewatch of something I haven't seen in decades or my first exposure, and what I know about it.

I haven't seen The Rescuers, though I have seen its sequel The Rescuers Down Under.

Speaking of sequels, I mentioned during my drunktweet of Oliver and Company that it was originally considered as a possible sequel to this movie, and that this movie would have been a sequel to 101 Dalmations.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1254849382551257088

But Oliver and Company and The Rescuers Down Under were only two of the follow-ups considered by the House of Mouse: if you've ever wondered at the similarities in concept between Rescue Rangers: Rescue Rangers began conceptual life as The Resucers: The Animated Series.

Rescue Rangers was retooled into an original property when The Rescuers Down Under was greenlit, and then further retooled to give a little bit of established Disney star power with Chip replacing series lead Kit Colby, Mouse Adventurer, and bringing Dale along as comic relief.

When I say that this movie was conceived of as a sequel to 101 Dalmations, specifically there was a draft of it where the villain (who became Madame Medusa) would have been Cruella DeVil, a character I understand she still shares a few traits with.

Other than that? I was aware of this movie as a child primarily because we had a picture book, I think a Little Golden Book, retelling parts of it. I don't think that book long outlasted my toddlerhood, though, so my memories of it are indistinct.

I knew so little about this movie, in fact, that when the sequel came out and touted Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor, I assumed those were celebrity recastings because I didn't think of older Disney movies as really having "name" cast members (and a lot of them really didn't).

But I guess Bob and Eva, in the 1970s, were really more TV actors than movie actors? Anyway. As a youth in the mid-90s when the internet barely existed to furnish me with information, I thought of celebrity casting for Disney movies as a more recent Disney phenomenon.

And that's about it. So starting the movie.

Oh, one more thing I know about this movie: this is the one that made Don Bluth throw up his hands and leave to seek his own fortunes trying to make movies that built up from the high standards of Walt Disney, which he thought the company had declined from.

I have to say, the opening sequence, I like visually. The oft-remarked phenomenon of the foreground and background cels being very obviously different is in full display here. Opening shot is completely static zoom in, with even that branch in the foreground on the same plane...

And here, as our hapless little girl enters, you can see that the door (a moving element) looks very different from its surroundings.

The top hinge being off is a nice touch.

TVTropes talks about the convention of "the conspicuously light patch" and the page quote references the Scooby-Doo Supernatural crossover episode where Dean singles out a book because it's "not painted into the background". tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.…

This is something that basically every cartoon does, with varying levels of obviousness, because the alternative is making the backgrounds over and over again for each thing within them that changes.

Kind of ironically, the more lushly detailed your backgrounds are, the more obvious it is you're pulling this trick, which I think is why it jumps out so much in the pre-Renaissance era ("the Disney Dark Ages") - they were still going all out on the backgrounds.

I believe in my Black Cauldron thread I pointed out that they basically weren't even using the same model for the sword when it was a background element versus when someone was going to interact with it. The cel version of it was incredibly simplified.

But you know what? In this movie, so far (40 seconds in), I like it. Look at this shot. Cartoon crocodiles (to judge by their design, if not the setting) that are definitely traditionally cel animated, but the background looks like a beautiful gouache painting.

Might it have looked more unified if foreground and background were in the same style? Sure. Might a man with a passion for the art of animation have found this lazy and sloppy, like they laid animation cels over concept art? Possibly. But I like it.

I don't know if this painted storybook style persists past the opening credits but the newsprint/paper grain being visible is an interesting choice, and it is a choice.

I'm also curious about how much of the texturing in the backgrounds would have been visible on home video, on a typical television.

Anyway. What's happening in this sequence is a little girl titptoes out onto the deck of a ruined steamboat and throws a message in a bottle into the water, while the two crocodiles watch suspiciously.

The opening credits proceed over a very economical montage (as in, there aren't actually a lot of shots/scenes, just enough to fulfill the bare minimum and hint at more) of completely static paintings of the bottle traveling out to sea and an equally short and perfunctory song.

Pointing out the thrift here is not necessarily a criticism. The song, which uses "Who will rescue me?" and choral vocalizations to pad out its runtime with little variation, is still more dramatic and effecting than the openings it harkens back to, like Cinderella's.

So the opening sequence ends with the bottle washing ashore and being found by mice, and so far they are sticking with the grainy, somewhat impressionist storybook backgrounds. And so far, I still like it!

Although in the brighter lit scene that immediately follows, as we shift all the way out of the opening sequence, it is a bit more understated. But not completely abandoned.

So we open the movie proper at the United Nations, with probably more diveristy among human characters than we will see in a Disney animated movie for a long time, but it's not about them. Mice in exaggerated national costumes surreptitiously hop out of their pockets/briefcases.

I have to say, the movie's realistic depiction of diversity immediately suffers a blow with the mice, who are more cartoony and exaggerated/tropey than the humans they hitched a ride with.

Speaking of exaggerated ethnci portrayals:

It's-a me! Mario!

...and "Arabia" and "Africa" each have one representative for the Mouse UN, while some individual cities in Europe have their own designated delegate.

Ope, apparently not individual cities. My eyes cross-read some of the match boxes and things they're using as desks with their little name plates.

The Rescue Society tracing their origins back to the mouse from Aesop's fable is an unexpected and charming touch.

Apparently one of the specific critiques Bluth had with this movie was the practice of not painting the whites of some characters' eyes, in particular the main characters. Taking shortcuts with main characters saves more time than with random background characters, but stands out

Ope again, no. I was right. There is a separate delegate for Vienna. When I rewound to check I saw the one from Austria and assumed I'd made an error.

I guess somebody just really wanted to draw Sigmund Freud But Like A Mouse Version and also didn't want to break the "Everybody is dressed like the Epcot Center version of their country." theming, even if it raises questions about the world-building.

And speaking about questions of world-building, apparently they decided to sidestep the optics of either having the USSR in this entirely rescue-focused scale model UN or leaving it out by having individual member states.

The very fashionable representative from Hungary arrives very fashionably late. Looking at Bianca's design here I wonder if the eye design shortcut started with "Her fur is already almost white, so why don't we...?" and then discovering that stood out if Bernard had actual whites

I've only seen the sequel, as I mentioned, so I was not expecting that Bernard would appear initially as Just The Janitor. After manning a broom at the door (and catching Bianca's eye with his heartfelt singing), he's summoned to open the bottle with a good deal of slapstick.

So the plot actually kicks off when Miss Bianca is the only one who bothers to muddle through the adorable spelling errors and water damage of Penny's message in a bottle, which doesn't contain much more than her name, and orphanage, and a cry for help...

...and then after being underestimated, overlooked, and disrespected for being a woman, she chooses Bernard to go along as her co-agent after seeing him receive similar treatment due to his class and occupation. Solidarity!

The other actual delegates who were very eager to be picked immediately applaud her decision (I guess they want to stay on her good side). The secretary-general or whatever clucks his tongue over the absurdity of it but the scene cuts out very quickly, suggesting it's settled.

The adventure begins with Bianca and Bernard getting off a city bus, Bernard checking the directions to the orphanage on a mouse-sized folding map in the pouring rain. When Bianca suggets a shortcut through the zoo, he hems and haws and she reminds him of their pledge.

I have got to say, though, I don't think that's actually applicable here. They still would have made it there if they would have stuck to the streets. Like every New York comedian ever takes the pains to point out, it's a grid system.

So the zoo sequence is another model of economy, where might have been an elaborate action sequence basically consists of Bernard, trying to show his bravery after his earlier objection, strides boldly off into the darkness and then comes out, running away from lion sound effects

I like that his characterization is not entirely one extreme or another... he winds up running *past* Miss Bianca (who is presumably perfectly safe, as the lion is presumably in an enclosure) but stops and comes back to collect her when she calls his attention.

At the orphanage, Bernard proves his instincts aren't all bad when he finds a box with Penny's things tucked away in a store room with "Hold Until Further Notice" means both that she's not there and also hasn't been adopted.

An elderly cat (age conveyed by the fact that he's wearing demilune spectacles and has a white mustache) hears them rooting around and wakes up with an ominous musical sting, but his actual concern is that if people see mice, they'll realize he's too old to do his job. Nice!

He also provides a convenient source of exposition for what happened to Penny, being a witness who couldn't have communicated to humans... oh, except now he's having a conversation with Penny in a flashback. Didn't realize this was a That Kind Of Talking Animals movie?

I can't remember if the mice and the child cody ever converse with one another in The Rescuers Down Under but I know that movie includes at least two non-verbal personal relationships between an animal and a human.

Rufus is now preaching to Penny about the importance of faith and how faith "makes things turn out right." I mean, that's fine for a child who is despairing over her situation and has no agency, but faith without works is dead, Rufus.

The animation of Penny scooping Rufus up off the bed and carrying him is perfect.

Ooh, very small detail but we see at the foot of Penny's bed is the same battered cardboard box with her name on it as in the store room later. When the mice enter in the present, we see a toy chest/footlocker with another child's name.

My assumption had been that Penny's stuff was moved to a box because they didn't have so many trunks they could just leave one unused but they weren't ready to just throw her stuff out, but here we see she's materially worse off than even the other kids in the orphanage.

Rufus believes that Penny ran away, but he didn't actually see her leave, and he reports that "a weird lady" who runs a sleazy pawn shop down the street tried to give her a ride, but he doesn't think they can be related because he knows Penny wouldn't have accepted. So trusting!

This scene also ends with a quick fade out after the cat expresses doubts about the mice's prospects. It feels like they wanted this to be a theme of the movie but also there wasn't much time or thought given to developing it.

Going to take a quick break to get something in my stomach that's not vodka! If you're getting anything out of this, feel free to give something!

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Okay, we're back. Establishing shot of the outside of the pawn shop, and was there ever a more evocative name for an establishment?

I never actually knew Medusa's deal, other than wanting a gem. Wouldn't have guessed "pawn shop owner".

Inside the pawn shop, the mice quickly discover a school book belonging to Penny. There's a kind of great set up in this scene, though.

In this shot, we see easily startled Bernard tiptoeing across the desk right next to a big, noisy-looking antique telephone. Surely Anton Chekhov is going to give them a ring at an inopportune moment, right?

Immediately after we get a quick glimpse at the time, on this ornate, quietly ticking clock...

And if you happen to note in that quick glance the design of the clock and the position of the hands, you can pick up on what's actually going to happen to break the stillness of the scene.

And THEN, as they're recovering from the sudden fright, the phone rings.

The phone ringing is more alarming than the clock, of course, for the simple reason that an hour chiming isn't remarkable to any human occupants of the building but the phone summons them, and so we get our first look at Medusa.

It's hard for still pictures to really convey what they're doing with the messy line animation on her. This was infamously part of Disney's "Xerox era", which was not a metaphor. A lot of people don't like it but I think it actually lends to a livelier, more organic style.

So the voice work on Medusa is excellent, with clear changes between her Customer Service Voice ("Madame Medusa's Pawn Shop Boutique" - she evidently dreams of better and bigger things) to her delight when she expects good news to her angry villain voice.

Her phone call with her henchman Snoops provides us with further exposition: she's got him using Penny to look for a diamond. She's alarmed to learn from him that she's been sending messages in bottles, and decides that she will come down to supervise herself.

I have been curious about this because I wasn't sure how fast and loose they were playing with the setting, given the low odds that a the wrecked steamboat in a bayou was in upstate New York or across the river in Jersey or something.

There's some nice subtle comedy in her taking only a single suitcase but filling it with what looks like maybe all the clothes she wears, a little play on the typical "overly fashion-conscious woman 'packs light'" joke. She's in too much of a hurry to actually secure it.

So not only does she leave it flapping around in the back of her car, but she loses it on her way out of town, which is bad news for everybody as the mice were stowing away in it.

The driving sequence is where you really see the resemblance to Cruella de Vil. Her roadster maybe has more miles on it but they both drive like demons. Her indignant cry of "Road hog!" and shortcut through a construction site could have been done by Cruella.

With their stowaway attempt foiled, the mice go to the airport. This scene of them on an escalator makes me very nervous. If Kevin Smith did nothing else worthwhile in his life, he included a PSA about escalator safety in Mallrats.

I mean, they can't have an adorable mouse-sized excalator made out of garbage or smoething? They've got to scramble around on a human-sized escalator, tails dangling dangerously all over the place?

They go up to the roof, which is an active helipad with multiple craft departing (I have questions about mice and propwash) and go to Albatross Air, which I was expecting.. the flight, I feel like, is one of the things that is pop cultural osmosis from this movie, sequel aside.

But I have questions about how the humans who use this facility don't notice this.

Inside, they find that an airline that seems like it consists of a single albatross (we find out he has a brother in the sequel, but the impression is the brother took over) has a direct flight on the board to their exact destination of The Devil's Bayou, and it's the only flight

Also there's apparently supposed to be someone inside the "tower" operating the radio as air traffic control, leaving Bernard to make the entirely arbitrary decision to clear him to land.

I know the whole idea is that it's cute to have the mice infrastructure paralleling human stuff but an actual airport is the worst possible place to have a mouse airport. We heard over the radio he was having trouble avoiding the other traffic.

So Bernard's got a running bit of not liking the number 13, and he balks at climbing thirteen steps to board flight 13, where Bianca suggests very practically that he just jumps over the last one. She then declines to tighten her seatbelt so as not to wrinkle her dress.

Orville has Bernard read the pre-flight checklist to him, which just hammers home how much this seems to be a one-bird operation and also how much it seems like it's not supposed to be.

The paper also refers to it as a charter service which makes way more sense.

Like, I guess they could have specifically chartered the flight to The Devil's Bayou (what I expected!) and we didn't see it but that doesn't exactly match up with Bernard's fear that they missed it.

I guess unless we read that as part of him trying to get out of flying?

Very good punchline (and very good Bob Newhart delivery) at the end of the checklist.

The footage of them flying past buildings in New York is the subject of one of those Disney urban myths that actually happens to be true: someone inserted, in post-production, two frames of a nude pinup in one of the windows. It was caught on one of the home video releases.

Lot of animating over very obviously static shots that shouldn't be static shots in the flight sequence, counting on the idea that the audience's eye will follow the birdie. I was actually surprised that they broke out some multiplane animation for the final leaving the city shot

It's not exactly the *best* multiplane animation, has kind of a Paper Mario pop-up book feel because of the way the rows of very 2D buildings are moving in relation to each other, but it's a very pretty shot of the harbor, and it's over quickly.

We get a second song over the flight sequence, which manages to convey fairly well through a mixture of cloud footage, POV flight, and close ups of the mice, the idea of a trip down the coast from New York, in that it starts out with clearly northeastern imagery...

...and then we see storms and fog and that leads to plants that would obviously belong in warmer climes. Very cute sequence of Bernard trying to read a guidebook on Devil's Bayou while Miss Bianca sleepily tells him how interesting it is and curls up to go to sleep.

This whole bit from the takeoff to here has some very obvious parallels with the sequel, in which Bernard spends considerable time trying to get up the composure to propose to Bianca. (Don't consider that a spoiler as it starts early on in the film.)

I have to say that Disney as a company has never shied away from pushing the envelope when it comes to showing the motion of light and water. Again, a still shot doesn't really convey it, but this intro shot of the bayou, the water is rippling under the moonlight nicely.

And it's another one of their "zoom in on a static shot" scenes, so they appear to be accomplishing this by animating the motes of light on the water in particular, so they can create a convincing illusion of movement on a still painting.

The impressionist watercolor stylings in the backgruond really plays well in the bayou.

The light on the water is used again too good effect in this slightly more dynamic shot (they also have rippling mist over the surface), where a view of the steamboat we've seen before is progressively lit up from within as we hear Medusa shouting for Penny and looking for her.

This movie, viewed against the background of Don Bluth's criticism and departure, has me wanting to rewatch The Secret of NIMH to see how its animation holds up, given that it was in part Bluth's retort to Disney's embrace of shortcuts and his attempt to recapture the golden age.

So Penny has snuck out of the steamboat and Medusa sends her crocs (Brutus and Nero, apparently. She's a classicist!) and then goes to follow... okay, I kind of love this contraption. It follows similar lines to her classic roadster, while being obviously made out of swamp junk.

The albatross arrives in the area just as Snoops is sending up fireworks to try to light up the area for the Penny search. The albatross catches fire and the mice bail out as he goes into a tailspin.

We then see two bayou mice in living in an oilcan and I think they missed a huge opportunity by not having this be a "shotgun shack" made out of a box of shotgun shells or something, but whatever.

Actually, looking at her design, I'm not sure they're mice. Might be muskrats.

The swamp rats know Orville by sight, so, no, I guess it's not a charter after all. Rodent society just requires there to be a regular flight between New York City and "a dangerous, uncharted" bayou.

Also! It's the unmistakable voice of Pat Buttram! The HONORABLE Sheriff of Nottingham himself!

In "they probably wouldn't do it today", swamp rat Luke is toting an ISO Standard 1,000 millijug container of moonshine that gives him devil eyes and fire breath, which he offers Bernard to help him recover.

Orville's attempt to take off (albatrosses really can't take off easily, the divebombing departure is how they gain alttitude) leads to him almost colliding with and getting sucked into the jet intake of Madame Medusa's swamp scooter...

...which is accompanied by the sound of a very wet and muffled Goofy Holler in the midst of it.

It's always kind of weird to me to hear that in one of the films of The Canon. Which is weird, because who else would do it? But it's usually in shorts, TV shows, etc.

Orville comes out the other end of the scooter little worse for wear, just a little blackened (Cajun-style!) and continues on his way.

Then we see Penny amid the cattails and reeds, hiding and trying to evade the search.

We see the crocodiles looking very smug and then we see them again, they are carrying Penny and her teddy bear, each one separately.

The mice give chase in a leaf boat powered by a dragonfly wearing a turtle neck. The ever-present fog is employed to have the rescuers actually draw equal with and even pass the crocodiles without noticing, allowing their boat to be swamped in the wake of their passing.

The humming "motor noises" of the dragon fly varying dyamically in intensity with the action of the scene is really good!

I was just wondering if anybody was going to tell Medusa that Penny was found and the movie answered me.

"Fireworks" should be the answer to more pre-cellphone communication problems in storytelling.

I think it's mostly because of cartoons that I was surprised to learn that writing things with explosive sky rocket type fireworks (as opposed to spelling things with fixed fireworks) is still in its infancy in the 21st century.

Aaand that's where we're going to stop for the day! I actually meant to stop at around 6:00 PM and closer to the halfway point, as I still have to cook dinner tonight. So if you're wondering if this movie is engrossing, there's your answer.

Reminder that I'm not doing this for my health, except to the extent that I need food and pills and such to remain healthy. If you've enjoyed my analysis and journey of discovery here, please feel free to throw something into the jar!

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Okay! We are back and ready to resume this week's Drunk Disney, which is my first time watching The Rescuers. If you missed the beginning of the thread yesterday, it starts here. I'm picking up a bit over halfway through.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1266082747837276163

Somewhat regular reminder that I do this to earn money for groceries and household supplies during these The Quarantimes, as well as the occasional indulgence such as my upcoming birthday.

Feel free to tip in at any time.

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When last we left off, Medusa was returning to the wreck of the riverboat after being signaled by the fireworks.

I've spent much time discussing the artistic merits of the animation of this film. I think the scene of her return is a good example of the good and the bad.

The sheer madcap invention behind Medusa's jet-powered swamp scooter is brilliant, and the Disney animators were early innovators in the techniques of animating three dimensional objects accurately in two dimensions.

One thing that made the scenes of Medusa's spiritual sister Cruella driving so very arresting was its realism, which was accomplished using an actual physical model that was photographed and animated over.

The process of animating over physical photography was not unique to Disney but is more often associated with thrift and produces images that very distinctly confine themselves to a single plane (picture He-Man and friends running, in the original Masters of the Universe).

It's impossible to watch Medusa sailing through water, over land, and through the air on her scooter, with its blocky and angular construction, and not imagine that had this movie come out two decades later, it would have been conspicuously computer animated.

In fact, as I write this I recall that the vehicle of the villain in this movie's mid-90s sequel stood out from the rest of the film as computer animated.

But while the vehicle itself moves and acts like a real object in her race back tot he boat, when she skids up the gangplank and screeches to a halt on the deck, the scene itself falls flat because the scenery *is* flat. It's an evocatively painted scene, but a still one.

The boards don't bend under the sudden weight. None of the hanging moss and vines swing or sway. The derelict shutters don't fall off or even rattle from the violence of her passing.

There are other scenes where the divide between animated foreground and painted background don't detract nearly as much, but here it somewhat robs the technical achievement of bringing the swamp mobile to life of weight, because the vehicle itself has no weight.

In my very first one of these threads, The Flight of the Navigator, I mentioned how they never failed to have the ship take off or arrive at speed without a practical effect in the scene to represent its wake, and how much it added.

Here it seems as though some of the most skilled animators in the industry have carefully and lovingly rendered one of the most ingeniously designed vehicles of the canon to date over a very nice bit of concept art.

And as I said yesterday: I was engrossed enough in this movie to overshoot my mark for where to stop, and I am curious how I would find Don Bluth's directorial debut holds up in terms of the animation done to his more exacting standards.

I think the choices being made here are not all or only questions of economy but also of artistry - I know some of the animators felt that the concept art for characters was often livelier than the finished version under the old system.

And certainly I think that it's hard to imagine either the frenetic energy of Madame Medusa or the easy charisma of Disney's Robin Hood in the pre-Xerox era. The characters became *less* cookie cutter when animators were freed from the demands of laborious hand-painting.

But for all that, I have to say that when the swamp rocket lands on the deck of the steamboat, it lands with a dull thud.

Anyway. Onward to the movie.

...or possibly not. Technical difficulties, please stand by?

Okay, we're rolling again.

So Medusa, in the course of throwing blame at Snoops, who tries to divert it to the crocs, we get some more exposition: Medusa kidnapped Penny in order to have someone small enough to explore a cave.

Interesting detail I had not gleaned from pop culture osmosis or my memories of the storybook: Penny has already liberated from the cave a fortune in gems and jewelry, a small portion of which is shown here:

I believe part of the goal in creating Medusa, once they pivoted to an original character, was to outdo Cruella, and I suppose part of that was answering "How do you outdo a woman who will kill 99 dogs for a coat?"

And so Medusa must kidnap not just an orphan, but the most lonely and poor orphan in the orphanage, and endanger her life on the regular in pursuit of riches, and also be unsatisfied with *just* being rich from her efforts.

I've got to say that Geraldine Page's voice acting as Medusa is continually very good, especially when she's getting villain-petulant on lines like "I want that diamond, I've. Got. To. Have. The Devil's. Eye."

Reminds me of Tammy Grimes (perhaps best known as Molly Grue in The Last Unicorn) performing as Catrina in a My Little Pony special. I could even imagine Grimes being given directed to or taking inspiration from this performance.

So the mice are watching this whole scene which means they now understand what is going on as well as we do, which is that when the tide is low on the next morning, Penny will be sent down into the cave and kept there until finds the diamond, no matter what.

They're just resolving to rescue Penny before that happens when the crocs get a whiff of Bianca's perfume and begin sniffing around, leading to a show of positive gallantry from the heretofore cowardly Bernard.

The scene of the crocodiles chasing him around the room and up a drape shows a more artful blend of animation and static imagery than some previous scenes - the fabric doesn't move when he's climbing but it also isn't clearly a different object when torn down.

Also, where it would have been very easy to just have the fabric rip, they go for the more challenging route of having the whole rod tear away from the crumbling wall, with cracking, exploding hardware, etc.

And the resulting melee under the fallen drapes is very much a stock cartoon bit but it feels a bit like a visual reference to the Mickey Mouse ghostbusting cartoon "Lonesome Ghosts".

Bianca returns gallantry for gallantry by charging in to pull Bernard to safety, leading to a very nicely done comedic segment where one of the not-particularly-anthropomorphic crocodiles plays the pipe organ they're hiding inside to try to blast them out.

Interesting question raised here: we've seen all manner of animals speaking to each other but Brutus and Nero behave *mostly* like unusually intelligent reptiles. Do they just have nothing to say?

I guess their spiritual descendant, Joanna Goanna, follows the same model in The Rescuers Down Under.

Might be that they just don't have anything to say to a couple of mice?

Also notable that while the crocodile is basically playing the organ fairly skillfully while the other tries to catch the mice with what are very distinctly dexterous hands (as well as his mouth), when Medusa makes her appearance they're just smashing the organ and chomping.

Was this a coincidence of timing or does the whole wainscot world of sapient animals have the protection of a kind of subconscious glamour whereby humans just won't *see* the truth of what they're doing?

Anyway, Medusa, angry at the disturbance, accidentally saves Bernard by striking the croc that has him in his mouth, and then panics at the sight of Bernard, jumping on a chair and calling for Snoops...and grabbing her mag-fed shotgun?

Got to say, this whole scene where she peppers the insides of the riverboat with shot after shot from a modern and realistic looking gun before catching one of her own pets with a full-on broadside to the backside is hard to imagine in a Disney feature today.

Also I guess this whole scene was subtly set up by the "NRA" sticker on the cashier's cage at Madame Medusa's Pawn Shop Boutique.

Oh, and it ends with her angrily pounding on the malfunctioning gun as she waves it around and almost scalping Snoops when it suddenly goes off.

As the mice recover outside, Bianca laments that she wasn't "a ten foot tall mouse", she'd show Medusa. I have to say I like her spirit. Most people would've wished to be human-sized in that situation, but if you're going to wish in the first place, why wish small?

Back on the boat, Medusa calls for Penny and we get this brief bit of heartbreak in the background.

Confidential to @nibnikk

https://twitter.com/nibnikk/status/1266088166022242304

Oooh, the "Worse Than Cruella" factor strikes again: after Penny begs to be taken back to the orphanage if she finds the diamond, so she can be adopted, Medusa asks, ever-so-sweetly, "What makes you think anyone would ever want a homely little girl like you?"

From Rufus's recollections at the orphanage, we know that this fear preys heavily on her already.

Recycled animation or Easter egg cameo? I suppose it's partly a matte of point of view.

So we get another song that though it has not literally called back to Rufus's exhortation on faith is following the same emotional arc of going from despair to hope, as we see the mice making their approach back to the boat.

Penny doesn't have as many lines or as much focus as Bernard and Bianca but the soundtrack of the movie is anchored to her point of view, which is interesting given how much Bernard in particular is positioned as the traditional main character.

The song ends and we see Penny praying with her teddy bear (not using the teddy bear, she arranges its limbs so that it's praying alongside her) that someone finds her message in a bottle as the mice are entering.

She begins to reassure the teddy bear that they'll be alright but can't get through it without collapsing into sobs. Got to say, writing small children is often hit or miss but they nail the purpose of a teddy bear in a situation like this: she uses it to externalize her feelings

In earlier scenes she urged the teddy bear to not be afraid or expressed anger at the way the various villains have treated it. Doing this allows her to deal with the reality of her situation without having to get to real.

The scene of her crying is pretty heart-wrenching but it means if you imagine from her point of view, she goes from praying that someone finds her message to being told that it was found.

She's not shaken at all by talking mice (Rufus the cat talked to her) but she's a little surprised they came alone. "Didn't you bring someone big with you? Like the police?"

Bob Newhart was the perfect choice to deliver the "No, there's just the two of us."

So they make a plan to escape by luring Brutus and Nero into the old cage-style elevator using Bianca's perfume that had given them away before, and Penny does an imitation of Medusa and invents the reaction image.

It's interesting how much Penny is the architect of her own escape plan, coming up with solutions to each of the obstacles that Bernard points out. We've seen her trying to escape, which might have been only to establish how much the outside rescue is needed...

...but I feel a lot of storytellers would have felt like "guarded by giant hungry reptiles" was more than enough bona fides for that. I have to applaud the characterization and the attention to detail.

Bernard sends Evinrude the dragonfly/boat motor to go get help from the swamp rats, and the resulting chase/flight scene against hungry bats and a spider has a decidedly "made for TV" quality compared to a lot of the other animation even in this movie.

Apparently the dragonfly being waylaid along the way was to delay Bernard and Bianca from putting the plan into action (as they were waiting for reinforcements) because it's followed by a short scene of Ellie Mae the muskrat explaining they need to wait for the mice's signal.

I have to say that while turtles and owls and such come in all kinds of sizes, all of these animals being about the same size as the not-much-bigger-than-the-mice muskrats and hanging out in the can shack has a very "not actual size" feel to it.

It's morning and low tide in the next scene and Penny's being led to the hole. I'm not sure what Bernard and Bianca wanted from the others that was worth not even trying to get away in the night. This is all very "because the story said so."

Going to take a little break to eat something before I proceed. If you're getting anything out of this, please give something back.

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At the "black hole", Medusa upbraids Snoops for talking sharply to Penny, which raises the possibility she wasn't being knowingly sarcastic when she talked to him before about how to get results out of children...

...which carries with it the interesting corollary that she really was *unthinkingly* cruel in suggesting Penny would prefer not to go back to the orphanage on account of no one wanting her.

But her "sweet" approach can't withstand her frustration when Penny objects (still on Teddy's behalf) against the terrors of the hole, and she winds up taking the bear hostage to better motivate the child.

I was just thinking how little this movie explains itself, as we've had no backstory for this cave, the treasure within, or Medusa's knowledge, and Penny explained to Bianca that it used to be a pirate's cave.

"How do you know?"

"HIM."

Pretty good timing.

The cave begins to rumble and Penny points out the scarier, darker hole in the scary dark hole where the water comes in with the tide. When Penny mentions how scary it is, Bernard puffs himself up and we get a little repeat of the zoo scene...

...complete with some very animalistic rumbling and growling from the completely unseen churning water in the passages below, but this time Bernard maintains his composure as he takes one look and decides no one would hide anything there after all.

Some of the best character growth is when we can see that the character is still the same person and see how they've changed.

But her attention drawn to it, Bianca thinks she sees something on the other side of the hole, and Bernard bravely volunteers to find "a safe way" across, which... he makes it, but a blast of water surging up from the pit demonstrates ably that there's not an actual safe way.

I mentioned Disney's facility with animating light effects. One thing about on-screen diamonds, life action or animated, is they often fail to capture the dazzling "fire" and sparkles that, if you ever see them in real life, can look cartoony.

The diamond is inside a pirate skull on the other side of the tidehole, and while for a moment it seemed like it glowed for no reason except Bernard was near it, it becomes apparent that Penny's lantern caused it, as she's never drawn this close to the hole on her own.

The diamond is too big to fit through the eye sockets of the skull, which gave me pause for a moment before I realized that the skull is *over* the diamond as much as the diamond is *inside* it.

With leverage from a pirate sword to move the stuck skull's jaw, they get the diamond as the tide continues to come in, and get pulled out just in the proverbial nick of time.

The reactions of Snoops and Medusa to the diamond interest me. Snoops says "It's worth millions!" and Medusa declares it's "Filled with power... for its owner." Very suggestive and evocative.

Like, maybe this is why she didn't appear to care about the other gems, which would be worth a lot intrinsically on top of any added historical value for being lost pirate treasure. Sure, she will *sell* them, but she wants to *own* this stone.

She recoils, Gollum-like, when Snoops begs a chance to look at it, and in a great gag, she grudgingly and very briefly turns her hands to flash it to him accompanied by a cheeky, tinkling two-note musical sting.

Her dragon-like cupidity only increases when Snoops suggest cutting the diamond into two equal shares (come on, Snoops, use your head - you'd sell it whole and split the money), insisting that no one will damage it and that it's hers.

I'm really fascinated by the backstory here. Is she just obsessed with this diamond for some personal reason? Is there a legend? A curse? Her being willing to kidnap an orphan off the street of New York and work in secret to bring up the treasure from a cave...

...that only she and her underling/partner apparently know about to get this one gem in particular at the exclusion of all others down there makes a lot more sense when we see what a hold this one gem in particular holds over her.

I'm imagining her finding some clue to its existence/location in some piece of junk that was consigned to her pawn shop and getting intrigued and spending years growing increasingly obsessed with every trace of a hint she can find.

Until the day comes when she finds the cave and realizes that time, hydrology, and geology have rendered it impassable and she considers hiring a crew but is overcome after she realizes that anyone else she brings in might steal her precious baby away from her.

Back at the swamp shack, daybreak has given Evinrude the chance to break away from the now-roosting bats, who still give chase but he makes it inside the shack by divebombing into the chimney, where he's revived by a drop of Luke's moonshine and leads the assembled animals off.

Aaand Disney Plus is timing out for me again.

Was about to say that the parade of animals on the charge reminds me a bit of Disney's Robin Hood (and not just because of overlap in voice actors). The choice of treating the Robin Hood story and so much of the casting like it's an American folk tale creates a lot of overlap.

I was thinking earlier that the mice had just skipped the whole Cold War, but the existence of a turtle who apparently fought in the U.S. Civil War on the side of the confederacy raises questions about the whole parallel animal society that I'm not sure I need to see answered.

...speaking about worldbuilding, watching this scene and remembering that Bianca and Bernard were fully dressed when she spotted them earlier (and reacted like it was a normal mice infestation) makes me think this is more Werewolf The Apocalypse rules than Vampire The Masquerade.

That is, being set upon by a miner mole and a muskrat wielding a rolling pin doesn't cause her to have a philosophical crisis like Sid when his toys turned on him or someone who just recognized Chicken Boo. She just reacts like a bunch of animals up and attacked her.

I jumped ahead a little bit because of the stream timing out, though. Zipping back: Medusa held both Snoops and Penny at gunpoint before making her getaway with the diamond hidden in Teddy, being taken down by a mouse-laid tripwire because she was covering the humans.

Her spill exposed the diamond through the stiching in the stuffed animal, and she and Snoops had a slapstick chase/fight over it before the swamp critters arrived to raise a ruckus.

Speaking of slapstick, we have another "whoops, different kind of cartoon" moment that I think she'd have a hard time explaining away as varmints being varmints.

Credit to Disney for giving her a mixture of soot and the peppered shot look instead of the traditional blackface.

With Medusa occupied by some of the swamp brigade, they put their original escape plan into action: Brutus and Nero trapped in the elevator, fireworks let off inside, and Penny escaping on the swampmobile, which Bernard and the mole are hotwiring from the inside.

The mole's body acting as a fuse when Penny finds the ignition again heightens the idea that the critters are in a different kind of cartoon than Disney usually makes (which is fine, I mean The Emperor's New Groove is certainly hilarious), or the rest of the characters are in.

Medusa manages to hitch along waterski style and even gets her hands on the vehicle, but Ellie Mae clobbers her for like the third time. Even with the male animals joining in on the attack and blowing up her gun in her face, they're mostly hewing to the "ladies hit ladies" rule.

Footage of the wrecked boat bobbing slightly as it slips further into the mire is unfortunately the most "Meanwhile at the Legion of Doom" animation I've ever seen in a Disney picture, though.

The big chase scene (if it's still a chase when the parties are physically connected) adds up to Medusa using her pets as skis as she whips them to try to induce them to catch up with the jet-powered swampmobile, until Penny swerves to avoid the steamboat wreckage...

...and inadvertently cracks the whip on Medusa, sending her and her two beefy boys hurtling towards what I thought was going to be a typically ambiguous Disney villain death amidst a fiery explosion. Instead, more slapstick.

Brutus and Nero, who were shown visibly not appreciating having their snouts whipped before, have utterly lost their fear of/respect for Medusa, and the last we see of the three of them, the they're circling the smokestack she clings to, snapping at her.

It's likely to be a moot point what with the river boat sinking and all but I think Snoops might have very profitably allowed the obsessed, trigger happy lady to leave with the diamond instead of fighting her over it, and just taking the rest of the spoils.

I mean, this diamond is world famous and has been lost for centuries so even if this salvage operation as not 100% legit there's no need to show provenance, but if you don't want questions and you need a low profile, all those non-famous gemstones are better.

Anyway. Snoops has a good laugh at seeing Medusa's plight, proving that if you've got your sense of humor you haven't lost everything, and the next we see of Penny is on a TV screen, being watched by the Rescue Aid Society.

We learn that the diamond is on its way to the Smithsonian and Penny is credited as "the brave little girl" who found it, and the publicity brought her an adoption. No mention of money, whether it was sold, donated. I suppose that was considered gauche, given the adoption story.

She corrects her interviewer that she didn't do it alone, because of the help from the mice of the Rescue Aid Society. The bemused interviewer, acting exactly like she's not holding up an elderly cat with a mustache and glasses, professes stunned disbelief...

...at her profession that mice can talk to anybody if they like, before deciding to chalk it up to Kids Say The Darnedest Things.

Back at the RAS, Bernard is trying to slyly suggest an ongoing partnership with Bianca when she just up and kisses him on the cheek. Evinrude the dragonfly arrives with another mission, to which Bernard finds himself volunteered in a really deft bit of animation.

He protests that he's all up for more adventure, just maybe with a little break in between (very Hobbit-y hero, this Bernard) but Bianca's infectious enthusiasm overrules him as we pan up for one last visual gag...

Oh, we're not quite done with the gags yet. There's another scene of Bernard and Bianca taking off for their next adventure in heavy snow, complete with a SECOND and more distinctive Goofy Holler as the Winds of Winter blow Orville backwards off the rooftop.

Evinrude the dragonfly is in this scene, as everyone is bundled up for winter, I can't help wonder if his wearing the turtleneck in earlier scenes was to save them having a second design?

We get another little snippet of song as the albatross wings off into the end credits, and that's The Rescuers, which I believe was the first fully animated film in the Disney animated canon to have a theatrically released sequel.

(Saludos Amigos was partially live action.)

Having watched this, I have to say: I'm way more interested in Madame Medusa's backstory (and that of the diamond) than I am about Cruella. Nothing against Cruella as a villain but I feel like with her we've got basically everything we need to know about who she is on screen.

While I actually respect a movie that doesn't feel the need to overexplain or justify itself, this one does enough to hint at its reasons, while keeping the resulting characterization very consistent, leaving the whole thing very tantalizing.

Anyway.

That's our feature for the day. I very much enjoyed it, and it's got me wanting to rewatch 101 Dalmations, and its own actual sequel, and The Secret of NIMH, so I guess well done to the Disney animators.

I think of the stuff I'm watching for the first time it might be my favorite so far? Though I guess of the stuff I'm watching for the first time it's also the one I already have nostalgia for (from the Little Golden Book and the sequel).

If you enjoyed these afternoons of Drunk Disney, please tip so I can keep buying alcohol. And also food. And medicine. And maybe hopefully soon an eye appointment.

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