Thumbelina is probably the most '90s Disney movie that isn't a Disney movie. It's also one of the few non-Disney animated movies from the '90s that I owned on VHS when I was a kid. The other one was The Swan Princess. As I mentioned in the blog update post that I posted yesterday, I only just found out that Thumbelina was on Disney+. I haven't owned the movie on home media platforms since the original VHS release came out in mid 1994, though I had planned on borrowing it on DVD from my sister had it not been streaming on Disney+. Still, it was nice to sit down and watch it again after all these years as it was one of my favourites growing up. And by favourites I mean movies I watched over and over again.
What struck me when I logged onto Disney+ to watch the movie last night is that Thumbelina is exactly how I remember it being from when I watched it as a kid. Like there are some movies you remember every scene in the order they're actually in in the movie, but then there other movies you remember, but you remember the scenes out of order or you miss a scene. For me Thumbelina is a movie where I remembered every scene in the order they're actually in and didn't miss any. Which is rare for me with most movies, even if I've seen them billions of times. Of course, it helps that no scenes were added or removed from the movie in the 26 years since it's release, unlike certain animated Disney movies from the '90s that had scenes added to them.
This movie is a good movie. Well, I use the word "good" loosely, because it's actually more of a nostalgic movie for me since I watched it a lot as a kid. There's just so much about it that's pretty problematic, watching it now as an adult. Basically every "villain" character in this movie, including Mr. Mole and Ms. Fieldmouse, treats Thumbelina like garbage. And not because they're evil by any means. It's just they don't care about her or what she wants. Well okay, Grundel the Toad and Berkeley Beetle are the "evil" ones in this movie, but honestly they do come off as more incompetent and shallow than anything else. They don't want revenge on anybody, and they're not looking for world domination or anything like that. They're just really scummy characters who got way more screen time than they probably should've. They're not even charming either. They're just gross. In more ways than one.
Normally I'd talk about my favourite scene in the movie I'm reviewing, but I really don't have one in this movie at all. Not that there aren't any good scenes, or memorable scenes, it's just there's a lot about this movie that is doing a poor job at doing a '90s Disney movie that it's jarring. So instead, I'll just talk about my overall favourite part of this movie. And that's Thumbelina herself. Oh sure, you could say that she's so naive that the only reason she fell in love with Prince Cornelius is because he resembled the Fairy prince in the book that Thumbelina's mother had just finished reading to her. But her innocence and naivete is actually the most charming aspect of the character. You can also really sympathize with her situation as well. Plus she's voiced by Jodi Benson, who we all know as the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid, so how could you not like her?
The thing I like most about the character is that by the end of the movie when she's about to marry Mr. Mole, Thumbelina is just as fed up with everybody in the movie as you are, because she realizes how bad her situation is and that life isn't always like a fairy tale, where things get better instantly, no matter how bad the situation is, and that it can take time for your situation to get better.
I also appreciate that this Don Bluth movie tried to impart a message to the audience. If you follow your heart, anything is possible for you to achieve is the message. However, I think Disney did a better job with this message back in 1950 with Cinderella. I guess it's just because the characters in Cinderella are more likeable and you don't feel like gouging your eyes out every time someone besides Cinderella is on screen, like you do with the characters in Thumbelina. And trust me, by the fifth time Jacquimo the Swallow showed up, singing "Follow Your Heart" I was hoping he'd get taken out by someone, just because he was so full of himself.
I'm not a huge Don Bluth fan. I love the animated movies that he made in the '80s, with An American Tail and The Land Before Time being my two favourite movies of his of all time. Which is probably because he wasn't trying to emulate Disney at all in the '80s. In fact his entire reason for leaving Disney and creating his own animation studio in the early '80s is because he was unhappy with the quality of Disney's cinematic output at the time and felt he could do better. And for a good ten years, he did do better. But, then for some reason in the '90s, he started making movies that, while they still had the tone that the movies he made in the '80s, weren't as good in terms of quality when it came to scripts and character development and they ended up not being very successful until Anastasia came out in 1997, nine years after his last success, The Land Before Time, had been released. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the movies he made in the early '90s were bad, I mean I enjoyed Thumbelina when I was a kid, but they just didn't appeal to people as much as his films from the '80s did. And that could just be because Disney had finally stepped up and were putting out a hit animated feature film every year or two and nobody could reproduce what made Disney's films from the '90s so successful.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Thumbelina isn't a bad movie. It's not a great movie by any means, but it's not unwatchable either. It's somewhere in between. It has good intentions, but everyone but Thumbelina and Cornelius comes off as unlikeable and in some cases, namely the Swallow, really annoying. The script also has a really weird idea about what love is and that aspect just comes off as weird and a bit unsettling. If I were to rate this movie with my nostalgia goggles on I'd be giving it an 8 out of 10 stars, because it was one of my favourite movies growing up. But, because nostalgia is not playing a role in this review, I'm giving it 2/10 stars, which is probably the lowest rating I've ever given a piece of media I'm reviewing without giving it a zero. Next week I'll be reviewing Odd Thomas, judging from how good the book is so far, I have a feeling I'm going to like that movie a lot more than I liked Thumbelina after this rewatching of it.
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