Though it's hard to remember, there was a time when animated Disney movies weren't the state of the art. It's an arguable point, perhaps, and one for which few, if any, other studios attempted to produce similar work. Yet the latter part of the 1970s on into the 1980s was the nadir of the form if considered against that form's resurgence throughout the 1990s that has once again seen Disney redefine animation's pinnacle of achievement.

Somewhere in the institutional transition from cell animation into various computer-generated technologies there was a simultaneous changing of the guard in animated feature film production. The somewhat lackluster The Rescuers testifies to this changing culture of youth and technological expansion and partially suggests why it may have taken a few years for the new aesthetic to entrench itself in the seniority rules system of Hollywood, but Walt Disney Pictures especially.

If for no other reason than not keeping abreast of changing audience tastes and mass media convergence, the late '70s and early '80s saw the release of animated features like The Rescuers that retain an anachronistic reach to older animated features like such classics as Snow White. Seemingly unable to grasp the penetration of television, top-40 music, the burgeoning of cable and videotape outlets and the requirements of ever more spectacular cinematic adventures, The Rescuers is a docile, slow-moving and unpolished work in comparison to its progeny. Plus it's saccharine and slow moving with the expected bevy of regional stereotypes, pat action sequences and stock bad guys to fill out the running length without causing either offense or excitement.

As is typical during any period of cultural upheaval, or paradigm shift, The Rescuers is designed to look backwards, rather than forward, to traditional, less youth-centered, ideas of how animated movies should work. Despite cultural signposts attesting to the crossover of popular songs into television and of television into movies that was readily apparent in live-action films of the times, animated features, perhaps due to their extended production schedules, were hopelessly out of touch with their contemporary sensibilities by the mid-'80s.

Overcoming the resistance of animated feature films to ignore changing times, Walt Disney Pictures managed to deliver the triumphal The Little Mermaid in 1991. It was drawn from a new set of technical tools and was intended for a wider audience after taking into account ancillary markets and tie-ins, not just for marketing impact but also as part of its on-screen story. Caught still anticipating these lessons, The Rescuers seems like a relic of older times if for no other reason than the quality of its animation that's several shades behind what our modern moment expects of such work.

Derived from the books The Rescuers and Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, the eponymous animated feature is a mild whodunit. It opens on a decrepit riverboat somewhere in Cajun country with a little girl named Penny (voiced by Michelle Stacy) who drops a message in a bottle asking for help and deliverance from her unbearable circumstances.

Through a labored credit sequence the bottle ends up in the possession of the Rescue Aid Society of New York, a mouse-run volunteer organization mirroring the United Nations that focuses on helping innocence seize its better day. In that group's meeting Penny's case is presented for action whereupon the lovely French mouse Miss Bianca (voiced by Eva Gabor) requests assignment to the rescue operation. To assist her she invites the Society's loyal, if hesitant, janitor Mr. Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart), and together the pair begins investigating Penny's strange case to offer some assistance.

After visiting the Morningside Orphanage where Penny once lived, they uncover parts of her unhappy childhood and speculate about how she may have been abducted by a cruel shop owner from down the street named Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page). Spying on the evil wretch they learn of her efforts to find a diamond in the mysterious Devil's Bayou so they set off for parts unknown in search of the little girl.

Exiting New York on the wings of an albatross named Orville (voiced by Jim Jordan), they land in the Devil's Bayou to try and find Penny along with Medusa's lost pirate treasure. With no time lost they find the red-haired devil ensconced in the old riverboat with a buffoon of an assistant named Mr. Snoops (voiced by Joe Flynn) and a pair of wily alligators the evil Madame keeps as pets.

With the help of local swamp folk, Miss Bianca and Mr. Bernard are able to make contact with Penny and hatch a scheme for her escape. Once lowered into a cave where the fist-sized diamond called the Devil's Eye is supposed to be hidden, the three uncover the jewel just before being drowned by a rising tide. Then capitalizing on Medusa's shortsighted greed they use their swamp friends to cause a series of distractions and make their escape in a hail of fireworks that leads them back to New York City.

In the end Miss Bianca and Mr. Bernard become heroes in the Rescue Aid Society and agreeably sign-on for a new adventure, ultimately ending up as a sequel movie in 1990. Not to be forgotten, Penny herself gives the Devil's Eye to the Smithsonian Institution for safekeeping and manages to find proper adoptive parents.

Played like an extended episode of Scooby Doo, The Rescuers involves the kinds of pleasantly silly hi-jinks the gang from the Mystery Machine managed to pull together as the basis of their half-hour long adventures. There's an eerie theme laid under scenes at the riverboat and there are odd musical asides meant to comfort Penny in her despair. Where the film ultimately fails, though, and save for the six and under crowd who undoubtedly watch the film simply because it's a cartoon, is in the utter lack of dread inspired by Medusa or her roguish gang.

One of the lessons learned by Disney animated features since The Little Mermaid is the necessity of having antagonists who embody physical harm as well as a set of narrative needs. That is, bad guys like Medusa can't simply be called evil and, therefore, be considered frightening. Instead they must wholly embody a particular moment's conventional notion of all that is horrible and scary or risk seeming ridiculous.

Thus, Ursula in The Little Mermaid doesn't simply want to end Arial's love affair with a human. She also wants to take over the underwater kingdom of King Triton, Arial's father, and destroy her enemies, not just symbolically but also literally as in a squishing out of life forces through bloody violence.

The Rescuers lacks this kind of menace and is the less for it. Medusa is never more than an eccentric with rough-sounding works and though her plans are easily seen for being selfish and mean-spirited, they are equally the fantasies of a relatively harmless criminal mind.

Still, Miss Bianca and Mr. Bernard's adventures managed to reach an audience of millions and mount a successful campaign at the box office to create an eventual groundswell for The Rescuers Down Under in 1990. The least that can be said for such a legacy is its imprint of success. The most that can be said is it's a testament to the simplicity of children who forgive under whelming adventure instead of demanding something more.