The Secret of NIMH
June 17, 1982 in theaters
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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QUOTE
"Mrs. Brisby, you are a hero."
DID YOU KNOW?
The film was based on Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH -- the character's name was changed to Brisby to avoid a trademark conflict with the Frisbee toy.
THE VERDICT
Synthesized from published reviews
Don Bluth's masterpiece and the film that proved Disney's grip on quality animation was not inevitable. The darkness of the material -- rats with surgically enhanced intelligence, a mother's desperate attempt to save her dying child, the cost of acquired knowledge -- is handled with complete seriousness, and the animation has a richness and density that Disney had largely abandoned by the late 1970s. Mrs. Brisby is one of animation's great protagonists, defined by vulnerability and unconditional love rather than heroic capability.
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