The Secret of N.I.M.H. Review

        The 80s in terms of animation had a massive shift. Disney had a brief period that encompassed that decade that has been commonly called the Dark Age. A moment in time when the animation studio was almost close to being dissolved. Additionally, animation was moving in a direction where the quality was downward trending and being cheap to make. One animator that was part of the Disney Animation crew left and formed his own independent studio. Don Bluth is the most important filmmaker in terms of cartoons and giving Disney a good competition. Here’s what I think of his feature debut. 

1. Don Bluth

        Just like Ralph Bakshi having a distinct voice, Don Bluth is the same with his animation style. Born in El Paso and living in Utah, he watched and inevitably worked at Disney as one of their animators. He had a hand in animating Sleeping Beauty and the animation hybrid Pete’s Dragon. He jumped from working with Disney and animating for television when he assisted with The Archie Show and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. 

        Disney’s The Fox and The Hound was Bluth’s last film with the studio. Having grown discontent with the artistic control that was shifting and the changing of the studio’s animation practice, Bluth decided to forge his own path and create his own studio. It would be a recurring thing where he would start a company but ultimately create a new one due to being cash strapped. While his movies were well received, it didn’t make enough box office revenue where his studio was sustainable. 

        One last tidbit is that he revolutionized video games. I was not aware that he had a hand in an Arcade game known as Dragon’s Lair. It was literally the most unorthodox game that came out during the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. It didn’t rely on pixelated graphics like its arcade brethren but used animation. The way to control or win the game is to guide the hero using quick movements that were shown on the screen to advance. One wrong move and, well what do you expect? Nowadays, games use this method called a quick-time event. At the time, it was revolutionary.

2. Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H.

        Based on the children’s book with the same premise and different name, even Disney was considering adapting the novel but turned it down. At the time, they had already released a mouse movie called The Rescuers. N.I.M.H. is the exact opposite of what Disney had produced at the time. Even more so, the fact that it was an independent feature that had a major studio distributing it says a lot. 

        We mostly follow the story of Mrs. Brisby, an intelligent mouse who tries to cure her sickened son. She’s thrown into a fantastic adventure where she interacts with other intelligent speaking animals and learns that they were products of NIMH. What I love about the movie is Brisby as a character. We first see her as a single mother raising her kids, one of them being under the weather with pneumonia. 

        She’s the rare example of a female protagonist that manages to be strong. It’s just her and her family that gives her the emotional baggage she has. At the start we see her getting medicine for her son who has pneumonia. A chance encounter with a crow named Jeremy starts her adventure to be an unlikely hero. When she’s with her family, Auntie Shrew helps her out with her kids. There’s one thing that I noticed that to me at least was different with other animated movies is that Auntie tells Brisby that she must grow up. It’s a recurring thing that we see what Brisby goes through, and she’s scared out of her mind. One thing that is the film’s best moment is her arc, from growing scared to inevitable being courageous. 

        Aside from her developmental growth, the movie is imbued with science and mysticism. We see moments when intelligent rats steal electricity from the farmer’s home to develop their own methods of energy. And from that point forward, we get to understand just who the rats are with their newly gifted intelligence. The whole dynamic has the science vs nature aspect to it since we see with Brisby that the rats have grown smart enough where they’re debating to either move or stay. 

        More so with we get an understanding as to who exactly NIMH is. I’ve dug around to find more info on the book and the author based his book on the studies of John Calhoun. Who studied on mice and rat dynamics when he worked for the National Institute of Mental Health. That explains what NIMH stands for in the movie and what’s interesting is that they are treated as a looming threat. Just scientists who give the animals some drug, for what purpose we don't know. 

        Speaking of threats, this film doesn’t hold anything back in terms of animation whenever there is something that endangers Brisby or the rats. The level of fear and unknown is the film’s other strong point. Like when Mrs. Brisby encounters a guard named Brutus and it gets real when the rat swings his spear at her. The film doesn’t shy away from the characters getting hurt. They bleed and near the end there’s a final fight that gets brutal for its time. 

        The moment between Brisby and a rat named Justin going into the farmer’s house might be the best moment when displaying Brisby’s fear. They have medicine to knock out the cat. Brisby is scared but Justin tells her that she must do it. This is the thing that is very rare for any animated film showing the emotional stakes that the main character is going through. The level of investment with this character is astounding since she’s being put through the ringer with everything going on. 

3. Legacy

        The film was a modest success, but I still think it’s one of the best animated films of the 80s. Given what was coming out before and during the time, it was game changing since it legitimately challenged Disney by being more mature. From there, Bluth got the attention from Steven Spielberg. It only made sense for an established director to try and dabble with animation. From there, this is around the time where both Bluth and Spielberg produced An American Tail and The Land Before Time. They were box-office hits and further cemented Bluth as an animator with a voice. 

        Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything that delved into why Spielberg and Bluth parted ways. From the late 80s through the 90s, Bluth struggled and made films that were just middle of the road or just bad. The box office revenues shrunk to a considerable degree since the product didn’t reflect Bluth’s style. It wasn’t until he made a partnership with 20th Century Fox that he made the animated adaptation of Anastasia. From there, his career was over after his following film Titan A.E. bombed and effectively killed the animation studio. 

        For some inexplicable reason there’s a sequel to The Secret of N.I.M.H. that came out during the late 90s. Bluth had no involvement with it and it obviously shows. I’ve seen pieces of it in small batches and man, I just feel bad for the fans of the first movie be so incensed and offended that this is a sequel to a beloved film. It wouldn’t be his only film to be made into sequels, and I’m curious to know if he ever got residuals from them. 

4. Overall

        The Secret of N.I.M.H. is one of the best animated films of the 80s. Even rivalling whatever Disney put out at that time.