Directed by Don Bluth
Written by Don Bluth, John Pomeroy, Gary Goldman & Will Finn
1982 | 82 minutes | English
Fullscreen Format DVD

Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, Derek Jacobi, Dom DeLuise, John Carradine, Shannon Doherty, Wil Wheaton, Paul Shenar, Arthur Malet, Hermione Bradley, Aldo Ray

What it’s about: A (very loose) adaptation of a 1971 novel by Robert C. O’Brien, the story follows Mrs. Brisby (Hartman), a recently widowed mouse and mother of four, living in the garden of a farm. The beginning of plowing season is coming, meaning they must move, but one of her children is sick and unable to make the journey. Her quest for help takes her to a group of rats living under a nearby rosebush, escaped experiment animals from NIMH who have acquired human-level knowledge of language, culture, and science and are seeking to establish their own independent society.

Reflections: I grew up with this movie, so it’s easy to take it for granted. But looking at it decades removed from both the particular sociopolitical anxieties of the late ’60s/early ’70s that spawned the novel and the “just go with it” vibes of 1980s children’s media, it’s kind of unhinged. A real government institution, and the leading mental-health research agency in the United States, has accidentally(?) created a tribe of super-rats who are on the loose. In this version, these science rats are also weirdly courtly and have a straight-up wizard king. Death is omnipresent, existential threats continually escalate, and several characters are very down for murder. The comic relief is problematically horny. There’s a lot going on here.

The film does a bit of a disservice to the book, but it’s also presented with Don Bluth’s characteristic painterly visual sense and willingness to embrace darker themes, which are enough to make it compelling if one doesn’t think too hard about it. The obligatory signature song isn’t anything to write home about, but the child characters are given dignity, there’s only a slight nod to any kind of romantic plot and, as bluntly presented as it is here, the message about perseverance through grief and sometimes risk is a good one. Dom DeLuise is doing what he does, but Elizabeth Hartman’s vocal performance is wide-eyed and earnest. Very young Wil Wheaton and Shannon Doherty are there. I still enjoy it.

I don’t know if that means I can recommend it. Even setting aside that society has changed a great deal in 44 years, a lot of it is obnoxious and nonsensical. But it is an iconic example of the kind of darkly fantastical story that haunted my generation’s childhood, which a lot of recent films, video games, YA novels, etc., have been trying to recapture.