The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue

This movie is a serious contender for the 'worst sequel ever' awards nomination category.

Let me elaborate on that...

I'll assume that when you read this review you are already familiar with Don Bluth's "The Secret of NIMH", which was a fine, dark and unusual animated movie that not at all conformed to the patented Disney cartoon mold which was lightweight, wholesome, pastel-colored nonsense with the characters spontaneously erupting in songs or other pace-annihilating planted plot permutations.

Instead, Bluth had the guts to try out his own formula, which was delightfully dark and mystic and devoid of pesky singing characters. The late Elizabeth Hartmann most excellently provided the voice for the humble and brave female protagonist rodent, Mrs. Brisby, and made the timid little mouse bigger than any animated character on the screen I had seen yet. NIMH was a good movie, even if Bluth made some liberal interpretations of the book on which it was based.

Jerry Goldsmith's rousing themes throughout the movie are a delightful bonus too. (the fact that the movie got trashed in the box office by E.T. was partly responsible for the advent of Bluth's most excellent animated laserdisc video arcade games coming into being.) Bluth never quite made another good dark movie after NIMH... The Disney Bug ate his brain, or something, because most of his subsequent films had pukey-cute designs and pesky critters singing (and even pesky marketable comic sidekicks.)

Now, NIMH 2 ...

1) Starts with a lame recap of the first movie; notably, Peter Strauss' voice for Justin has been dubbed over...

2) ... Is followed by the worst video-animated logo you can imagine. It's like a demented 3D Studio learner's first project. You can see the friggin PIXELS!!

3) Has god-awful backgrounds painted in naive primary colors

4) Has god-awful animation which was allegedly outsourced to a bunch of animation sweatshops in eastern europe. It shows.

5) Introduces a token female 'love interest' for the now-grown-up Timothy. She has BOOBS. She's a friggin MOUSE! How revolting... I thought this sort of crap was only made by sweaty fanboys.

6) Introduces a token comic sidekick, which is some kind of incredibly annoying, talking green bug with orange hair, a suit and bowler hat. How out of NIMH style is that, I ask you?

7) Has songs. And I don't mean incidental, or is that accidental stuff you can just crank the volume down at. (Many people didn't like that "Flying Dreams" song in the first movie either.) But noooo! The critters are all a-singing and a-dancing, and the songs are shrill and cacophonic and performed and orchestrated like high school theater plays. How unbearable! One of the songs even has a 'duet' performed with a video split-screen! Wheee!

8) Has the whole NIMH thing, which was a relatively sober and seemingly 'real' medical research lab, turn into Castle Frankenstein and brings one of the most perfectly stereotypical 'villains' into existence, complete with stiff mechanical (meniacal?) cackles and rolling demented eyes. This character looks like a left-over from a budget PC adventure game.

9) Is just stupid (pardon the regression)

10) Is a complete and utter waste of money, an insult to all thinking viewers, kids and grown-ups alike, an iron-studded MGM boot in the face to the artists who made the first movie possible, and the fans who liked it.

In closing, all I want to remark is that I hope MGM will release "The Secret of NIMH" in widescreen on DVD as they promised.

As other reviews have noticed, this flick is a slap in the face of those of us who loved the original movie as kids. The animation is truly Saturday-morning level, and I was cringing every time a familiar character popped in -- they had been stripped of whatever edginess they had previously possessed and given voices that grate harshly on the ears of long-time fans. The songs were painful and completely inappropriate every single time, and the story was just plain dumb. I am a camp counselor for kids aged 6 to 10, and even they hated the movie. Parents, please don't subject your kids to this drivel, and fans of the original, don't even think of even picking up the box to this shameful waste of time.

Secret of Nimh 2: Timmy to the Rescue is a horrible let down from the first. I caught it on the Disney channel a few years back, and it's horrible! The ending is so stupid it's insane, and it's truly a cinematic insult to the first. And like all Disney sequels being filmed lately, they use a new animation look. I loved the old look of Secret of Nimh. The animation is what made it great. This, like many sequels however, have a very cartoony look to them, instead of an "animation" look. So take my advice. Don't even see this film because it will ruin all the respect you have for the original. 1/5 stars (only because it's not the worst movie I've ever seen!)

JOHN ULMER

Oh, what an idiot I am. I read the reviews, and I rented this disc-shaped fragment of decaying bovine excrement anyway.... and believe me, I want those 79 minutes of my life back, desperately. I won't rehash the obvious and pervasive reasons why this just might be the worst animated flick ever committed to film (of course I haven't actually SEEN every animated film in existence, so it's possible that there's a worse one out there somewhere, but I doubt it). Those reasons are adequately rehearsed in the other reviews to be seen herein.

I merely want to issue a warning to other potential viewers who loved the first film as I did, and thus might be thinking, as I did, "It CAN'T be that bad..."

Trust me. It can.

Never in my entire existence have I been so entirely disappointed in one single streak. Honestly. My heart falls when I think that an entire generation is likely to remember THIS travesty as the only NIHM movie.

This is little more than a piece of Direct-to-Video drivel, moulded right from the formula that Disney has, as of late, ironed out and pushed down our throats. Maybe I'm jaded, but I still cannot accept this as a NIHM movie.

I was a child when Bluth unveiled the original Secret Of NIHM, over a decade ago now; re-releases, video versions, and all the rest have never dulled the fantasy and wonder of it. This 'sequel', as it sees fit to call itself, has none of that life. The plot is weak, formulamatic; the voice acting is merely marginal; music is used where unnecessary, simply because it can be (The Great Disney Fallacy, in action again); the story of the original is scattered like so much debris...but that's not the worst.

The worst is that there is no wonder here. No grand adventure, no superheroes and magic and characters that make you want to dream with them. None whatsoever.

If this is the new trend of children's movies, my kids are going to watch an awful lot of ratty, worn-out, videos.