After re-watching The Secret of NIMH after so many years, I have to reluctantly conclude that it's one of those films which was better in my memory than it actually is. That's not to say that it's a bad movie, because it's not; it's a perfectly serviceable animated feature for kids. The animation is quite good, as the movie was made by Don Bluth and other animators who had broken away from the Disney company. Disney was in fact struggling at that time (the 1980's), producing some of its more mediocre- and downright bad-animated films. No, I have NOT forgiven them for their butchery of The Black Cauldron, from one of my favourite series of books as a child, Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. It was the absolute worst adaptation... um. Where was I... oh yeah. Though Don Bluth's efforts to set up an animation company which could challenge Disney eventually failed, we should probably be grateful to him for threatening them enough that they were forced to better themselves, resulting in the Disney renaissance of the 1990's. So the problems I now have with The Secret of NIMH have to do with the story structure rather than the animation. I haven't read the Newbery Medal winning book it's based on, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, my sister has, and so after the movie was over we discussed the differences between the two. From the sound of things- shocker, I know- the book is better. To start with, none of the mysticism and magic which are in the movie are in the book. It's curious to me that the writers arbitrarily decided to add it in, because it's completely unnecessary and, in fact, detracts from the story. Here we have a group of rats who have become super intelligent due to experiments performed on them in the NIMH lab; what they are capable of should be the focus of the story. Instead, their story is sidelined as the day is saved by the magic amulet, which is frankly a lot less satisfying than the rats figuring out what to do themselves. There's simply too much going on in the plot: medically altered rodents or magical powers... one or the other could work, but both together are overkill, and weaken the story. This is aptly demonstrated in the characters of Nicodemus and the Great Owl. Nicodemus is supposed to be the sage elder rat who leads the others with wisdom and intelligence. But the movie also gives him mystical powers- characterized by the glowing eyes- for no particular reason. Oddly, the film also makes the Great Owl supposedly both wise and mystical (note the glowing eyes again) meaning that the two characters fulfill the exact same function, undermining the importance of both. It seems strange to me that they would choose to add such an unnecessary plot device. The other problems I have with the film mostly stem from this. According to my sister, the book goes into what occurred to the rats and mice at the lab, and how they escaped due to the heroism of Jonathan Frisby (not Brisby; it was changed for the movie because the Frisbee company kicked up a fuss). Unfortunately, there's so much going on in the movie that all of this is reduced to a very short flashback. It seems to me that this would have been a much more interesting movie: the experiments, the rats' growing intelligence and awareness, plotting and executing their escape, their learning to harness electricity... all of this seems like it would have been a more compelling story than the one we got. We never even get to see the NIMH exterminators: we are just told about them in an overheard telephone call. The tone of the movie is also somewhat uneven. On one hand, we have a rather dark tale about sinister medical experiments, murder, and the suggested extermination of all of the modified rats. On the other hand, we have Jeremy the crow- voiced by Dom DeLuise- periodically staggering into the scene, getting tangled in things, taking prat falls, and burbling about nonsense. It's occasionally a bit jarring. In conclusion, I didn't hate The Secret of NIMH, but it was disappointing that it didn't hold up to my memory of it. It also puzzled me; I understand changing a book to make it more suitable for cinematic use- books and movies are very different mediums. But making changes which actually confuse the plot and weaken the narrative seems counterproductive, to say the least. While nowhere near the travesty that The Black Cauldron is- yes, I AM bearing a grudge- The Secret of NIMH could have been better.
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