Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: The Rescue

In just a few short years, Touchstone Pictures significantly turned Disney’s fortunes around. Despite the occasional misstep, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had helped turn the studio into a remarkably consistent hit machine. 1988 was shaping up to be one of Disney’s best years yet, with major hits like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cocktail. But nobody hits a home run or even a base hit every time they’re at bat. Every so often, there’s a total strikeout like the utterly forgotten and ridiculous action thriller The Rescue.

When the trades first began reporting on The Rescue, it was going by the title Seal Kids (it should not come as a complete shock to hear there is not a great deal of detailed history out there about this movie’s production). That title, while appropriate, was pretty bad, so it was eventually changed to The Rescue, a title I would argue is somehow even worse. It’s so utterly generic, I’ve spent half the last week referring to it as The Return before catching myself. Still, that didn’t prevent Washington Post critic Richard Harrington from cracking that the movie’s young protagonists should be called Seal Pups.