Don Bluth is a Disney-trained animator who quit the studio two years ago to set up his own shop in his garage. Sixteen other Disney artists joined him.
Bluth believes in the art of what he calls classical animation, as opposed to the non-art of computer-age animation fed to the tele-generation every Saturday morning.
The Secret of NIMH is Bluth's first main animated feature. It arrives in town not too coincidentally with the re-issue of Bambi, a classical animation original to which it bears some resemblance.
The spirit of Disney -- depth of color, gooey script and doe-eyed little animals -- lives on in NIMH. It's a timely reminder for a generation which has only been finding out secondhand what an enthralling art for young audiences Disney animation once was.
The very act of viewing 24 different richly-colored drawings a second had become a neglected thrill.
Bluth's story comes from a Newbery award winning novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brien. In the wake of the phenomenal success of Watership Down a couple of years ago, it's not hard to see why it was chosen.
There are animals, a family of mice, threatened by Man in the shape of a farm tractor, who have to move.
Mother Mouse, Mrs. Frisby, goes to the wise old owl for advice and is passed on the the Rats of NIMH, some super-intelligent mutants from a research laboratory, for which NIMH is presumably an acronym.
There's a crow called Jeremy goofing around as a very blatant reminder of the bombastic seagull in Watership Down, and some bad rats along with the good. The animation of evil owes somthing to the Watership team. It's dark and threatening and probably a bit heavy for the under-sixes -- but there weren't too many screams from yesterday afternoon's crowd.
The wicked rats and the brief glimpses of humans are the only jarring notes in a world, frequently suberranean, inhabited by the likes of mice who need braces, a busybody shrew, a lump of a cat, and Jeremy the buffoon.
NIMH needs Jeremy; it's not a humorless movie but it takes its mysticism and Jerry Goldsmith's thunderous score, rather seriously.
Goldsmith ladles on the musical melodrama, serves up a syrupy theme and generally drowns out the coziness which Bluth's animators strive to impart.
Fortunately it isn't allowed to get in the way of what's billed as the "voice talents" of a strong speaking cast...Derek Jacobi as the kindly old head rat Nicodemus, Hermione Baddeley as Auntie Shrew and Dom DeLuise being his nutty alter ego as Jeremy.
It's being a good summer for family-type moviegoers -- afternoons of E.T. and Bambi, and now the conscientious charm of NIMH to make comparisons.
The very youngest may not feel quite as comfortable with it, as they would with Bambi and the Watership Down set may flinch at its sweetness a bit, but NIMH is a decent reminder of the kind of animation the two age groups once took for granted.