The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Directed by Don Bluth
A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.
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What critics compared The Secret of NIMH to
(Watch for one clear visual nod of acknowledgement to Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH .)
Credit Disney vet Ken Duncan and the artists at Canadian outfit ToonBox Entertainment with designing what is quite possibly the cutest pack of scavengers to hit the screen since Don Bluth (“An American Tail,” “The Secret of NIMH”) put down his pencil.
If I could, I'd look back a few years to compare The Great Mouse Detective to another mouse cartoon from the 1980s; Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH .
While the producers include Tim Burton ( Edward Scissorhands ) and Timur Bekmambetov ( Night Watch ) 9 tonally owes more to some of the darker 1980s animated features such as Don Bluth’s 1982 The Secret of NIMH .
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This animated feature from Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (the two former Disney guys who teamed up for a series of features, including "The Secret of NIMH" and "American Tail," is kind of a tweener.
Bluth and Goldman, who have staked out a reputation as a counter-Disney with films like "The Secret of NIMH" and "The Land Before Time" most notably and the excruciating "Rock-a-Doodle" least notably, aren't nearly so gifted or visionary.
"Titan A.E." is the latest feature from Don Bluth, the onetime Disney animator ("Robin Hood") who broke loose and, with another Mouse Factory refugee, Gary Goldman, produced a string of middling-to-good full-length cartoons: "The Secret of NIMH," "An American Tail," "All Dogs Go to Heaven" and more.
Bluth, whose pictures include The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go to Heaven, codirected the movie with Gary Goldman, and it's clear that he's trying to advance his technological artistry along with the times.
He largely succeeded (the schmaltzy sentimentality which would cloud his later works such as An American Tail and The Land before Time is the only drawback) with this story about a proud mouse who strikes up an unlikely friendship with the rat branch of Mensa.
His success was inconsistent, but at its finest moments The Land Before Time has moments of beauty to match anything in The Secret of NIMH or An American Tail.