Review of The Secret of NIMH (1982) by Edith N — 17 Mar 2008

It's time for that fun, fun game--justify a high rating for a beloved childhood movie! Oh, there are some where everyone agrees that they're great. Even some animated ones. But if it's animated and from anywhere between about [i]The Jungle Book[/i] and [i]The Little Mermaid[/i]--and especially if it's an animated movie from the US that predates the formation of Pixar but isn't actually Disney--you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that your rating isn't pure nostalgia factor. And I speak as someone who has given beloved childhood movies quite low ratings indeed even when they [i]did[/i] hold up to adult viewing. (See [i]Fern Gully[/i] at 6, for example, or [i]The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again[/i], also at 6.) And sure, I gave [i]Tron[/i] a 10, but I hope I gave a persuasive argument for it. I shall try to do so again here, even though [i]The Secret of NIMH[/i] gets a lower rating from me.

So there were these rats, see. And they used to experimented on at NIMH (the National Institute of Mental Health), see.

Okay, seriously. We start our story with the quest of Mrs. Brisby (Elizabeth Hartman, who committed suicide not long after recording), a widow supporting four children, to find help for her younger boy, Timothy (Ian Fried), who is very sick. She is given help by her husband's old friend, Mr. Ages (Arthur Malet). This means Timmy probably won't die of pneumonia. Unfortunately, the animals in their vicinity are about to experience "moving day," that time when Farmer Fitzgibbons (Tom Hatten) starts plowing his fields, thus disrupting the native ecology of mice and shrews and rabbits and things. However, moving Timmy probably will make him die of pneumonia. On the advice of the Great Owl (John Carradine, yet), Mrs. Brisby seeks out the council of the rats of NIMH, rats made intelligent by that experimentation we mentioned earlier. Indeed, Johnathan Brisby had been one of them. Nicodemus (Derek Jacobi) agrees to have the cinderblock the Brisby family lives in moved to a place out of danger of the plow.

Of course, things do not go according to plan. If they did, we wouldn't have much of a story. There is dissent among the rats, for one thing, over whether it is better to move away from the farm and make their own way or to continue to steal electricity and so forth from the farmer. There is the dread cat Dragon, who can put an end to all sorts of things, including, of course, the lives of tender young mice. There is goofy crow Jeremy (Dom DeLuise, of course) and his attempt to find a mate.

And there is Jerry Goldsmith's lovely score. And there is the eerie lights from the rosebush, where the rats have strung Christmas tree lights. There is the horror that is the inside of the tractor, the stunning visuals of the scenes of moving the Brisby home. There is Mrs. Brisby herself, who is the very definition of brave--scared to death, but determined to move ahead anyway, because she needs to come out the other side. Even Farmer Fitzgibbons and family are not caricatures. Dragon is, but to a mouse or rat, how three-dimensional is that cat trying to kill it? However, Farmer Fitzgibbon is losing things to the rats, and he's probably and justifiably scared, a little, of rats that live in a rosebush that produces mysterious lights at night.

I'm certainly not making a case for [i]The Secret of NIMH[/i] as Great Art; that [i]would[/i] be nostalgia talking. However, it is beautifully animated, and it is more human than many other films, even live action ones, that we have seen here. True, there's something slightly supernatural about those rats, especially Nicodemus, but at bottom, this story is about one mother trying to protect her children. Indeed, for most of the story, the only thing we really need suspend disbelief for is that heightened intelligence of rats.

I would think, however, that superintelligent rats would be too subtle to light up the rosebush like that!