Review of Thumbelina (1994) by Harry W — 25 Feb 2014

Thumbelina was familiar to me as being an animated Don Bluth film, and despite its rather negative reception I decided to look into it.

But the reception is just, because there are many reasons to dislike Thumbelina as an animated film and especially as one made by the intelligent Don Bluth.

The animation quality in Thumbelina is poor because it deviates back and forth between hand drawn animation and 3D computer animation, although reliant moreson on hand drawn animation which is very rough and skips frames at several times. The quality of the animation is not impressive, and given that it cost more than twice the budget of Don Bluth's previously acclaimed animated feature The Land Before Time you'd hope for it to be more impressive. It's colourful animation and the detail to characters is impressive, but their movents don't feel organic. Up against the superior animated films of the 1990's, it is no surprise that Thumbelina failed at Box Office, and really it feels more like a comic strip with slight movements than an animated feature because even the scenery fails to connect to the characters well at all.

When it comes to the story in Thumbelina, elements of it are even too reminiscent of other more superior animated films from before it, such as the scene in which Cornelius and Thumbelina sing "Let Me Be Your Wings" which is clearly taken from the famous scene in Aladdin in which Aladdin and Princess Jasmine take a magic carpet ride across the world as they sing "A Whole New World", and coincidentally enough Aladdin even featured the voice effort of Gilbert Gottfried who worked in Thumbelina as well. So Thumbelina is too unoriginal for its own good and therefore fails to introduce anything new to the world in terms of writing or animating. The story even borrows elements from Don Bluth's far superior 1982 film The Secret of NIMH but then tells a significantly more childish story which doesn't employ any of the darker elements Don Bluth is known for, and it just ends up being a bland and repetitive story with little compelling elements to it. Frankly, I couldn't really have cared what happened to Thumbelina and there was too many subplots along the way which just made it more and more stupid as it developed.

And retreading the mistake made in Don Bluth's 1989 animated film All Dogs Go To Heaven which similarly had rough animation quality, Thumbelina is packed to the brim with poorly written and easily forgettable songs with one of them even winning the Golden Raspberry award for Worst Original Song, a first for an animated film. The songs aren't as bad as Charlie Strouse and T.J. Kuenster's from All Dogs Go To Heaven, but there is too many more in Thumbelina and they aren't catchy or even sung that well half the time. I mean the voices are good, but they aren't in tune with the composition. And the lyrics are uncreative even though three writers teamed up to write the music, including the famous Barry Manilow.

Eventually, all the negative elements of Thumbelina take their toll on the viewer and they are left around waiting for the damned thing to end. For an 86 minute long film, Thumbelina feels a lot longer because the repetition is the only consistent feature of the film which is insanely off-putting, so I would gladly recommend that people not watch Thumbelina. It has little appeal beyond entertaining the female tots, and I don't really believe that any girl that young can be considered a professional critic.

And the voice acting is hit and miss.

The voice of Gino Conforti does not match his character Jacquimo and so the whole experience is weird, and the same goes for Carol Channing.

Gilbert Gottfried's character occasionally matches his iconic voice, but it's inconsistent. He does have a good iconic voice though so he makes a decent touch for the voice cast of Thumbelina.

And the voice work of Jodi Benson was magnificent as Thumbelina because she hit the perfect pitch and tone and put a lot of energy into the role. The woman was named a Disney Legend in 2011 and it is no surprised because she has energy and passion for the role and she sings magnificently well.

And Gary Imhoff was ok.

But nevertheless, Thumbelina is an excessively scattershot animated film with poor storytelling, inconsistent animation and none of the charm that Don Bluth is good for.