Vowing to resurrect the "classical" style of animation that Walt Disney perfected and then -- because it was so costly and time consuming -- began to abandon, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy led an exodus of disgruntled Disney animators to form Don Bluth Productions in 1979. Now their first animated feature, The Secret of NIMH, is on the market, where, ironically, it will have to compete with the reissue of "Bambi." In a nutshell, what distinguishes classical animation for the current cartoons in Saturday-morning TV is greater movement and detail, backgrounds and foregrounds that move simultaneously and characters with a greater repertoire of gestures. There are also richer and subtler uses of light and shadow: in classical animation, raindrops glisten, necklaces sparkle and trees wave in the wind.
Whether or not children care that animation has become a diminished art form is a moot question. There's no doubt, however, that "The Secret of NIMH" is an ambitious and entertaining debut that will delight and terrify kids everywhere. If there are flaws in "NIMH" they are a product of its ambition: visually, moments when the animation is almost too busy to take in; dramatically, an eclectic and overstuffed plot that threatens the balance of the movie. But better a surfeit than a soporific.
"NIMH" tells the story of a widowed mouse, Mrs. Brisby (voice by Elizabeth Hartman), who must relocate her family before the earth-turning tractor on the Fitzgibbon farm destroys her home. From this simple premise the story fans out in many directions: terror, comedy, sword-and-sorcery mysticism and contemporary social criticism. As in many animated films, from "Bambi" to "Watership Down," humans are the barely glimpsed villains wreaking havoc on the world of nature, a species against whom the animal world must ally for survival. To Mrs. Brisby's aid comes a klutzy, romantic crow (wittily spoken by Dom DeLuise) and a feasome but wise old owl (John Carradine) who sends her to consult the rats of NIMH. These are no ordinary rodents but escapees from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where they were tortured and injected with experimental substances that have endowed them with human intelligence -- they're rats who read and use electricity and who are engaged in an internecine power struggle over the uses of their secret gifts.
Furious Pace: The rats' story is so charged with implications that it threatens to overwhelm Mrs. Brisby's dilemma, and one may feel, given the title, that the stronger theme has been given shorter shrift. But Bluth and Co. are fleet tale spinners, and the action comes at such a furious pace that you relish the surprises without worring whether all the parts mesh. "The Fox and the Hound," which many of these animators were working on when they left Disney, was more of a piece, but it was also duller and more sentimental. It's as if the creative frustrations these men felt came pouring out in "NIMH," and they wanted one movie to show off the full range of their talents. They've infused conservative style with new and bizarre energy. The result is slightly lunatic, and all the more fun for it.