Review for The Secret of NIMH

Introduction

Here’s something that depresses me. I was four years old when I first watched Disney’s first feature length animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, forty years after its theatrical release. Last night I watched ex-Disney animator Don Bluth’s first theatrical feature forty-two years after its initial release, again for the first time. It was released five years after I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.


It’s all about Disney really. When I was a kid, Disney was the home of magical animation, delightful fairy tales that enchanted and enthralled. No one did animation like them, and there was a period that they single-handedly kept the movie musical alive in Hollywood. But then Walt Disney died, and Disney stopped making Disney movies, instead settling for close facsimiles with cut-down animation, and following trite formulae. They peaked with Jungle Book, and everything following was a slow slide downhill, leading to films like Robin Hood. The nineties saw a momentary renaissance, as computer animation allowed for 2D imagination like never before, giving us the era of Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, but then Disney went full on 3D, seemingly putting all their cinematic eggs into the Pixar basket, passing the 2D torch to Studio Ghibli.


Don Bluth’s career is a response to that initial decline in 2D animation from the late sixties to the early nineties. He started work at Disney, but with the old guard moving away from the kind of Disney movies he aspired to, he and a group of Disney animators left the company to form their own, and start making the kind of animations that Disney did, once upon a time. And for a good 20 years, we got movies just as good as the best of the Disney back catalogue, films like An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and Anastasia. If you’re into videogames, you’ll also remember Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. Now Eureka are returning to Don Bluth’s first feature length animation, The Secret of NIMH (originally released in the UK on BD by Twentieth Century Fox. I just hope that this Blu-ray release leads to a Blu-ray for Titan A.E.


Mrs Brisby is a recently widowed mouse who lives with her four children near a farmhouse. Every time the farmer ploughs the field, the animals know to move, but when her son Timothy comes down with pneumonia, that isn’t an option. Going to the Great Owl for advice, she’s told to go to the rats for help. These rats live under the rose bush in the farmer’s yard, but these aren’t your average rats, and dealing with them brings unexpected dangers.

The Disc

The Secret of NIMH get a 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on this disc, with PCM 2.0 Stereo English audio with optional English subtitles. There’s no subtitle option on the menu page, so you’ll have to use your remote to switch them on and off. It’s a good transfer, supplied by the studio. It’s clear and sharp, and free of print damage and signs of age. Colours are rich and consistent, if somewhat autumnal, and detail levels are good, making the fluid animation come across with breathtaking effectiveness. There is a natural level of grain, although there is the odd moment of flicker too. The audio is fine, Prologic helps give the stereo audio some space, and the action comes across well. Jerry Goldsmith created an impactful and evocative music soundtrack although I did find that the dialogue was a little low in the mix.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.

Extras

The disc boots to a static menu, and you’ll find the following extras.

Audio commentary with animation scholar Sam Summers
Audio commentary with director Don Bluth and producer Gary Goldman


A Way to Go Home: 2024 Interview with Director Don Bluth (19:59)
Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: Stacey Abbott on The Secret of NIMH (23:02)
Courage of the Heart: Motherhood in The Secret of NIMH by Catherine Lester (16:02)
Secrets Behind the Secret: 2007 Featurette (14:25)
Stills Gallery (12:59 slideshow)
Original Theatrical Trailer (2:22)

The first run release of 2000 copies will come with o-card packaging, and there is also a 16-page booklet with writing on the film from Peter C. Kunze.

Conclusion

I’m a little torn when it comes to The Secret of NIMH. When it comes to the quality of the animation, it’s harking back to golden age Disney when it comes to the detail, the fluidity of movement, the complexity of the animation, and the wondrous use of visual effects to really make the film come alive. At the time, Disney hadn’t made anything of this quality in 20 years. The characters are engaging and interesting, the story has its effective moments, and in terms of visuals, bolstered by Jerry Goldsmith’s score, the film is peerless. But you may have noticed that I restrained my effusiveness when I mentioned the film’s story.


Visually it may hark back to classic Disney, and elements of the story do as well, particularly the Jeremy crow character who is very much there as comic relief. But this is a film that needs comic relief, as the story departs very much from anything that Disney had done before. The first, most obvious difference is that this film is about a mother, doing whatever she can to protect her family. In 1982, a female protagonist leading an adventure film, even an animated one was rare enough to be notable, but a mature, mother character as opposed to the usual coming of age characters that we normally see, makes this film feel unique.


The story is anything but Disney as well, who to this point were better known for fairy tales and fables. This is a complex and dark tale, certainly one that belies its U rating, about a mother fighting to save her family, and encountering a veritable rat civilisation beneath a rose bush. There’s commentary here about animal testing, the effect of humanity on the environment, but these genetically modified ‘smart’ rats wind up creating a society that mirrors human societies to the degree that they split into factions, with the power-hungry plotting to take control, the kind of gaslighting politician we see too often these days.


In the end however, The Secret of NIMH over-eggs the pudding. You have your anthropomorphised animals reflecting our experiences back at us, with plenty of allegory to reflect. There’s a fair bit of science and technology to explain these smart rats, and if it were just that, then the film would maintain an internal consistency that would work. But it throws in the supernatural, the mystical, and the magical as well. Once we got to the Jedi Mouse Trick, my brain checked out and the story lost any relevance for me.


The Secret of NIMH has its moments, and purely as a visual piece, a statement of intent by Don Bluth it succeeds spectacularly, presaging bigger and better things that would come in the following years. But it doesn’t quite work as a movie for me, even if it was better Disney by far than anything Disney was doing at that time. The Secret of NIMH is available direct from Eureka Entertainment and from mainstream retailers.