La légende de Brisby

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.

The Secret of NIMH was one of the best kid's movies ever. It disturbed and frightened me as a kid in the way a good fairy tale does (or the way adult movies disturb and frighten adults in on a different scale), because it makes you think about big issues, but in a way that kids can still learn from and love to watch. The sequel, wow, it was pretty bad. The animation quality was okay, not as good as the original but not horrible, but the story went the way of a mediocre afternoon TV cartoon. They added a few cartoony characters for comic effect, including a caterpillar and two cats, who could talk although it was never explained how since they had never been experimented on by NIMH. They turned it into a Disneyesque musical, with a song every 10 or 20 minutes. One character switches from an American to a British accent in the middle of the film for no reason. It's not scary in the least, not like the original, even atmospherically like the original scene where Mrs. Brisby confronts the Great Owl. Despite a fairly impressive valley where the mice now live, you don't have any feel for their world like in the original, cobbled together by enhanced intelligence into makeshift versions of the human world, complete with electricity and moving parts. There are strange slang phrases present like, "You know what I'm sayin'?" and "team-player." It is linked to the original, though, and if your kids have not seen it, they will be confused.

I will give it credit for one amazing plot twist in the middle which took me by surprise, and they resisted the urge to cutesy it up like Lucas did with his Star Wars prequels. The voice acting was decent. Some of the jokes were funny. Really though, The Secret of NIMH, the original, had a vision and a lot of hard work put into it. The second felt more like a moderate effort for a calculated return on a direct-to-video sequel they knew most people would ignore outright. Compared to the average Disney movie, just as pure entertainment for kids who've never seen the original, I would rate it a 5 instead of the 3 I gave it. Worth renting, not buying.

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

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.

Avoid this movie - especially if you liked its predecessor. It's just simply terrible. The two movies have so little in common that it's just sickening. In fact, I don't even want to write any more about it. Suffice it to say that you should not watch this movie. It's not worth the depression it brings when you think about how much you'd expect from a sequel to such a great movie.