Synopsis
A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.
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Cast
- Derek JacobiNicodemus (voice)
- Elizabeth HartmanMrs. Brisby (voice)
- Arthur MaletMr. Ages (voice)
- Dom DeLuiseJeremy (voice)
- Hermione BaddeleyAuntie Shrew (voice)
- Shannen DohertyTeresa (voice)
- Wil WheatonMartin (voice)
- Jodi HicksCynthia (voice)
- Ina FriedTimothy (voice)
- John CarradineGreat Owl (voice)
Recommendations
- 100
Christian Science Monitor
The Secret of NIMH is exciting, engaging, and often magnificent to look at. Add it up, and you have what is probably the best cartoon since the bygone heyday of the Walt Disney studio. - 100
Entertainment Weekly
Bluth and his animators, bless them, chose to revive an endangered art form — classically detailed animation. They drew their characters exquisitely and gave them individual personalities. The entire ensemble — artists, actors, animals, and musicians — created something unique: the world’s first enjoyable rat race. - 90
Variety
The Secret of NIMH is a richly animated and skillfully structured film created by former Disney animators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy. As craft, their first feature film is certainly an homage to the best of an age ago. - 75
The A.V. Club
Bluth's directorial debut (co-produced, co-written, and co-designed by Pomeroy and Goldman) has its clunky side, particularly in its bafflingly outré alterations to the plot of a beloved children's classic. But the animation was, as Bluth and company had promised, a spectacular return to old-school craftsmanship. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
The Secret of Nimh is an artistic success. It looks good, moves well, and delights our eyes. It is not quite such a success on the emotional level, however, because it has so many characters and involves them in so many different problems that there's nobody for the kids in the audience to strongly identify with. I guess you could say that the Disney tradition lives, but that the Disney magic still remains elusive. - 75
Rolling Stone
The Secret of NIMH folds a commentary on the evils of animal experimentation and a salute to the bravery of single moms into a smart, gripping action-adventure framework, becoming an underappreciated touchstone for sensitive Eighties kids. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
This superbly animated (but weakly scripted) tale was produced by Don Bluth, who left Disney Studios when he became dissatisfied with the quality of their animated films in the 1970s, taking a dozen of Disney's best animators with him. The result is a return to the lush, finely detailed animation seen in the best Disney features. - 70
Time Out
It's a spectacular return to the shimmering, mesmerising deep-focus animation associated with Disney's classic period: a marvellous use of lighting to create atmosphere, dew-drops glisten from every tree, and the villains are as primally terrifying as cartoon villains should be. The choice of material (Robert O'Brien's novel Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) is less fortunate, since it lacks the wonder of early Disney, and the mouse heroine is far too insipid and twee. It's still a pretty effective family film, though.
