You'd think that someone in the city would want to dedicate a statue to the one mouse who kept everyone from getting poisoned and saved her entire family from drowning horribly. No, but let's give a statue and throw a parade to the whiny butt who did the absolute bare minimum of "heroing"
I read in an article about this sequel that Don Bluth would have made Timothy the villain. That makes more sense. Martin’s stronger, doesn’t get sick all the time and is smarter. He saved Timmy in the first scene, which was made their dad a hero. Timothy is smart enough to set machinations in order to become the chosen one or something. It’d be kinda cool if done properly.
There's at least one thing that's almost smart about Martins plan, and that is to attack under the full moon. 1. Most of Thorn Valley will be asleep and unprepared. 2. They're flying on pigeons, not owls or other nocturnal birds, so they'll need the extra light from the full moon to see properly. Also, what's THE derogatory term for pigeons? FLYING. RATS. *Curtains drop*
Had this movie been handled better instead of being another DVD sequel to Nimh and handled by either one of the Booth Brothers, the film could have worked, especially with the flying pigeons and army of rats invading Thorn Valley.
I clicked on 'like' out of accident because of laugh spasms while trying to click 'show responses'. But I'll keep it, because you've written the truth.
Every single time I hear that line, it sounds fake. It must take true skill to write a line that outstandingly bad in a movie full of awkward writing! 😂
Have you ever considered reviewing The Secret of NIMH 2: Penis to the Rescue (ex: us voting for you to review it sometime, maybe next year when AniMat and Jambareeqi might review this shitfest ofa follow-up)??
Well, if it helps, _The Buzz on Maggie_ portrayed a caterpillar as an actual infant - namely in the episode “The Candidate”. However, the show mainly focuses on flies, so maggots are portrayed much the same way.
One thing they kept from the first movie was the fact that the original rats of Nimh have a slowed aging process. It was a very powerful scene when Nicodemus revealed to Mrs. Brisby that her husband never told her about his connection to the rats cause he didn't want her to know that he was going to outlive her. It was a really heartbreaking scene. So if anything this dumb movie got right is that the rats like Justin haven't aged.
Except the film also ruins that concept as well, because despite how many years have passed by the film's end Mrs. Frisby is still alive and well; when being an ordinary field mouse she should have either been dead before the start of the film or on her death bed.
@@IAmTheUnison she probably got mutated by the magic rock thing Nicodemus gave her and that's why she's doomed to live a long life of becoming a lich queen.
So... he save their town and all they got him is "Jonathan Brisby and son" statue instead of "Timothy Brisby" statue. And no statue for his mother at all. Yeah, that's seems fair.
6:41 WHOA WHOA...hold the phone. Wasn't the whole point of moving to Thorn Valley because the rats wanted to become completely self-sufficient and not rely on stealing from humans? Ugh, this friggin' sequel, i swear...
"Upcycling materials". Yes, they have food, but they can't just grow metals or the like and have shown using human sized items such as beakers, even in the first movie
I'm still confused on how Timothy's the youngest of the Brisby kids. Wasn't the order supposed to be Teresa, then Martin, then Timothy and then Cynthia? Also, if Thorn Valley's people had worshipped Jonathan so much, why didn't they bring his wife and children to live with them?
Okay, can I just say for the record how much I loathe the idea of Martin being the villain in this movie? He was my favorite character in the original Secret of NIMH, and I felt so much for him, Teresa and Cynthia. Timmy was almost a non-figure in the story given that he was sick in bed the entire time, but the other children helped anchor us in the stakes and better represented what Mrs. Brisby was fighting for. When the Brisby house almost sank, it was heart-wrenching seeing those three children we've grown to love over the course of the film trapped inside. So to have this sequel completely demonize and (in the case of the girls) ignore these characters who were so lovable in the original is incredibly upsetting. It's the same way I felt when Maleficent turned the three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty into bad Three Stooge knock-offs.
Not to mention, this sequel had turned the other characters into jerks. They scold Timothy for being reckless and arrogant when it was their fault for praising him for just being Jonathan's son and nothing else. Then there's the fact that they had refused to help Jenny's family and kept her as some prisoner. Who are we supposed to root for again?
the1koolkitty They ripped off the plot line of Martin's jealousy from the subplot about Nuka and Kovu from Lion King 2. However, that subplot worked because it didn't involve any stupid plot twists, and, it was because Nuka was rejected by his own father, who instead favored Kovu, even though Kovu wasn't Scar's biological son.
I always think about how a proper sequel to _The Secret of NIMH_ should be handled. First of all, it should have started off with the unveiling of Mrs. Brisby's statue. Mrs. Brisby gets a letter in the mail from Justin inviting her to the ceremony. She, and her entire family, get a ride on Jeremy as they enter Thorn Valley. They're greeted by Mr. Ages and Justin as they escort Mrs. Brisby, and her family to their living quarters. While there the Brisby kids decide to spend some time exploring the town, before the unveiling starts. They agree to meet at a certain time, and go their separate ways until then. They're old enough to make their own decisions, but Timmy (being the youngest) is told to stay under constant supervision. The girls go shopping, while Martin and Timmy visit the library to learn more about their dad. Mrs. Brisby reunites with Justin as they catch up on old times. After years of development and resources, Thorn Valley flourishes under Justin's watch, but faces resistance from those who believe he should step aside due to his age, and let the younger blood take control. Even though the rats of NIMH age slower than the average species, large amounts of stress and responsibilities protecting the Valley have decreased Justin's health by a considerable margin. At the same time, a spy from NIMH is suspected within the facility, and would cause great harm to Thorn Valley if information is leaked about its location. That's basically what I came up with so far. If anyone has a better story in mind, feel free to brain storm.
Good start, it holds the story for the first five minutes or so, but it needs more tension. Who would the spy be? Why would they be a spy? How does the Brisby family connect to the spy? What is the plot relevance of the girls shopping and the brothers going to the library? Sidestepping those issues for now and working backwards from the end of this hypothetical movie, I think the theme of the film should be something akin to passing-of-the-torch. Mrs Brisby is an old woman now and it's time for her children to look after her like she looked after them when they were young. All four of them need individual arcs to reflect their growth and which can be neatly woven together in the climax. Given that Mrs Brisby is just a genetically ordinary field mouse with no enhanced lifespan, her children will have to come to terms with her mortality which IMO would make a stronger subplot than the shoehorned romance so many other films insist on.
@@helenanilsson5666 I also think Mrs. Brisby's aging should be a contributing factor. I think her and Justin can have a conversation about how growing old can be both a gift and a curse. That it can make you wiser, and appreciate what life has to offer, but it also forces you to acknowledge that time waits for no one (no matter the life span). Justin would also make a proposal for the Brisbys to live in Thorn Valley. Not only for Mrs. Brisby's sake, but also for her children's education and well being. She adamantly agrees her children deserve that, but she also holds a strong attachment to her old house in the field. 1.) I'd say this spy is either a Manchurian candidate from NIMH (unaware that he's a spy until a certain trigger sets him off), a Jenner sympathizer whose twisted ideology sees Justin as a false leader, or he's a poor soul being forced into a situation he doesn't want to be in (thus helping the real spies). He collects herbs, and spices for his business, and also for medicinal purposes. 2.) Honestly, wouldn't you want to explore a great place like Thorn Valley when given the opportunity? I totally would. By doing this it gives the place a sense of history and world building. As the characters explore the place, they learn more about it, and get use to the idea of living there if they ever decide to move. *-Teresa* (the oldest) would be the responsible type. She's very feminine in nature, but knows when to put her foot down when push comes to shove. She's calm but also self confident. She gets annoyed with Martin for his massive ego, but tries to do be more diplomatic. *-Martin* (the second oldest) would be the macho, jockey type who often butts heads with Teresa in terms of dominance. He's a bit of a self-centered lady's man, and overestimates his abilities, but would know when to back off when his temper gets the better of him. He wants to be a good role model to his younger brother (Timothy), and tries to be the man of the family. He also learns to be patient around Timothy, and knows when to be straight with others. *-Cynthia* (the second youngest) is a kind-hearted soul who wants people to get along. She has great empathy for her siblings, and passive in nature, but would try to find a solution to resolve the matter. When backed into a corner, her inner fury is unleashed, and a force to be reckoned with. Cynthia relates more to her younger brother (age wise), but loves to hang out with Teresa when doing certain activities together. *-Timothy* (the youngest) is a book worm, and wants to pursue a career in medicine after surviving pneumonia. Never knowing his dad, he wants to learn more about him, and also find a way to help their mom's waning health. Martin often teases him for being a nerd, and would often try to toughen him up. He looks up to his older brother, and would often spar with him, but also feels comfortable being an introvert. The spy would probably be in the library learning information about Justin, until he stumbles upon Timothy, and they bond over books, knowledge, and helping others. As they get to know each other more and more, the spy offers to help their mother's decreasing lifespan. Again, it's just more spit balling from my end. But it's fun to speculate.
@@liveslex5581 Hell, we could even find some homegrown musicians, animators, and song writers to make a better movie. The internet is amazing at letting us do that.
Helena Nilsson “How doesnthe Brisby family connect to the spy?” Easy, make them possible suspects. Remember the Council Rats had the hardest time respecting Brisby because she was an “outsider” and only started respecting her when her relation to Johnathon was told to then (as well as Jenner manipulating them to help). Have some of the rats give Brisby’s family the stink eye for being an outsider and some feeling she shouldn’t be given a free pass because she helped ONE time a long time ago (when she did it because she wanted them to help her). Also, have the kids accidentally get into some kind of trouble or accidentally be framed for some trouble. Boom! Instant distrust, Actual Conflict, and Motivation for the Brisby family to clear their names and find the culprit. ... Sorry, I watch a lot of Murder She Wrote, so I love setting up a good mystery
Here's now I'd do it. - Brisby is getting old. Her children are aging slower, and will be on their own. Brisby knows that her children are not ordinary mice though, and should not live as ordinary mice - they need someone who can take care of them and see they are educated, and there is only one possibility for that to happen: The rats. - Act One: The quest for the Rats. A bit of cross-country trek, as the aged Brisby and children follow clues and rumors to find the place where the rats fled to escape detection. - Act Two: The rats are found, and their community is... actually doing pretty well. Very, very well. The rats are smart - seriously smart, and now they have space to florish their society has turned into what appears (on the surface) like quite the utopia. Of course it isn't, because we need conflict for the story. The children are immediately swept up in the wonder of it. Brisby is alienated: This is just too much for an unaugmented mouse. - So it's time for our conflict! Which shall come in the form of meeting the local wildlife. While the rats have been advancing their technology to a level that would make the humans envious, they have also inherited some other traits of intelligence: They look down upon the less fortunate wildlife with contempt. Their irrigation has ruined the local habitat, their monoculture fields provide little foraging and are defended from scavenging birds. Local resistance has formed, but it is quite helpless, and the rats do not care. Yes, we're going for the old environmental cliche. It works... but we shall be subverting this shortly. - Now we need a hero, and a villain. For this we need first a villain, who advocate two approaches to dealing with the conflict. The villain rat favors aggression: He won't openly advocate killing all the non-augmented animals, but he does advocate driving them all away with a new super-weapon: A mad science spray that will poison all non-augmented creatures, forcing them to leave. - Meanwhile, our hero - one of the children, don't care which, they are all interchangeable - finds the deepest secret of NIMH: In a vault beneath the city, the rats have been conducting animal experiments of their own, capturing local creatures as test subjects. What foul purpose are they seeking? It certainly *looks* evil... but now it is time for our first big reveal. - Rat society is aware of the conflict with outsiders, and there are two factions of extremists - both with their own ethically-questionable way to deal with it. One faction sees the wild creatures are stupid, sub-rat, inferior being and seeks to get rid of them - they tell themselves that they are doing the right thing, justifying that they are protecting the community. The other, weaker faction has been using them to research the one thing that most rats consider too dangerous to research: Themselves. They want to recreate the research that granted the rats such intelligence in the first place, and amplify the effect into something far greater: A virus capable of rewriting animals at a deeper level, which will make rats so greatly super-intelligent they will be able to rule the world - subjugating all others to their benevolent dictatorship. They justify their actions by saying that the rats will surely be discovered one day, and the only way to survive human discovery is to be smarter even than the humans. - Both of these factions are presented as villains, because they rather clearly are. They are villains who believe they are acting for the greater good, like all the best villains, but their true motives are elitism and a fantasy-racism. Both seek to use the children as pawns, seeking their support, as a respected outsider could tip the balance of power. They science-solves-everything leader even offers Timothy a gift - a necklace containing a vial of their almost-perfected intelligence virus, telling him that it could make his mother as smart as any rat. - Final act: The balance is tipped. Not by the children, but by Brisby: He own strength of character, seeking to see her children are educated even though they will enter a world she can never truly be part of, convinces the rat leadership that the cost of *both* these plans is too high. They will not become like the humans. - This drives the leader of the kill-em-all faction into breakdown - fearing a rebellion of 'unintelligent' life, and his own reputation, he attempts to activate the dispersal machine. Now we get our climax, a chase through the bowels of the town machinery in a desperate effort to stop the activation of the death machine, finally arriving at the core - but the mice are too small, too slow - they can't stop it. We get the mandatory all-is-lost moment as the machine activates - and to make us really care, Brisby is the first to get hit by the gas cloud. - Now it's time for Timothy to save everyone - with his smarts. He can't stop the release of the toxin... but then he realises there's another way. He risks his life by jumping into the machine and forcing his vial into a pipe. Kill-em-all leader tries to chase and stop this, but he is too heavy for the frail pipework and falls to his off-screen death. - For a moment the rats look on in confusion. - Then worry. - Then absolute horror as they realize what Timothy has just done. - As the climax is over, Brisby and the other non-rats begin to cough and awaken. In an epilogue the community is seen again.. changed. The rat school has expanded now - greatly so, with new species seen among the students. An older, very frail-looking Brisby sits among them, learning to read. The rats are not alone now: With their research gone airborne, the entire valley shares in their intelligence. The former head researcher is stripped of his position for unethical experimentation, but still free. The rats are humbled: They are no longer superior in mind to all other animals. All are welcome now. Now, isn't that a better story? (Post-credit sequence: Jeremy is captured. As the camera pans out we see the trap, and more like it, all bearing a logo: N.I.M.H.)
So I recently saw the film again, and realized these people didn't even pay attention to the SMALLEST details. -NIHM is like Lady and the Tramp in that you only see the humans' faces long enough to vaguely know what they look like. Meanwhile the scientists in the sequel have their faces front and center. -The thing that made the rats smarter was an INJECTION, not any sort of shocking. -Mrs. Brisby and Auntie Shrew should by all accounts be dead by now because of how slow Timmy should be aging. -There were THIRTEEN mice that got the intelligence boost, not six. -The Great Owl is supposed to be daunting to get to, so why is nobody questioning the ruse Jeremy is putting on. -Cats aren't sapient in this universe. -Most importantly, the whole damn point of going to Thorn Valley was to the rats didn't have to steal anymore. Having a scene where they steal things ruins the point of the first movie entirely. I get the impression the writers never watched the original at all with how much they got wrong.
jade smith 'Welcome to Duloc' is already a parody on 'It's a Small World'! Any film with a song that welcomes newcomers that makes THAT song good (as is the case with this movie) has accomplished something truly HORRENDOUS!
I think what’s ironic with this film is the original Secret of NIMH book had a sequel which they could had adapted. The only thing they would had to change is how to explain how Jenner had a son when he died in the first film.
You know what the REALLY ironic thing about Jenner's character transition for adaptation is? Jenner is...NICODEMUS' BROTHER! *Dun, Dun, Duuuuuuuuuunnnn....!!!!
Also, I hate to play the "sexism" card, but damn if this movie isn't sexist. Mrs. Brisby gets no recognition for her heroism in the first movie and Timmy gets the glory and praise and statue at the end despite Jenny actually being the one who stopped the villain among other proactive heroism...what the actual hell, movie?
Yeah, and it's worth remembering too that Mrs. Frisby did all that she did without being genetically-altered! She was just a simple field mouse who saved a bunch of self-absorbed lab rats ALONG WITH her own family, so I agree...Where's Her Damn Statue!
MrXemnas1992 @ MrXemnas1992 It also doesn't help the fact that Teresa and Cynthia were just background dressing compared to their major roles in the first film. 😑
The fact that her incompetent brat gets a statue after doing the bare minimum yet she gets thrown into the background, barely mentioned, and ZERO statue despite being the reason the rats AND her kids are even alive is infuriating.
You have a point, though they also ignore Justine's heroics too, as he helped Brisby too, and defeated Jenner. Meanwhile, the kid gets praise just for existing, which granted feeds into his character flaw of "imposter syndrome," (a trait not seen often) but they should regard the others too.
In all fairness, it's mentioned in both the movie and novel that the NIMH treatments slowed the aging process for the rodents. That's why Jonathan was so reluctant to tell his wife about it--he didn't want her burdened by the idea that he would stay young while she grew older and died.
He also never approved of how Thumbelina OR A Troll in Central Park came out, either. And he got so fed up with "Pebble and the Penguin" that he TOOK HIS NAME OFF THE PICTURE.
Best of my knowledge Don Bluth didn't approve of ANY of the sequels to his work...with the possible exception of "Fievel Goes West", but I can't speak with any certainty on that.
Mrs. Brisby is one of my favorite female heroes in animation. It pisses me off that she was left to this. I know it’s probably because her voice actor died but still!
1. Annoying cats that were adducted are tortured and experimented on by the villain (he himself was also experimented on) 2. Villain, along with the evil scientists who remorselessly experimented on the animals are set free 3. Annoying Cats (who are just as much of victims as the villains themselves) are left to die a fiery, melty and very claustrophobic death in a elevator, while villains who did the experiments get out alive and well. That's a pretty ruthless way for are "heroes" to dispose of what amouts to 2 random mooks, at the least the other Thorn Valley rats had the common decency and tact to just drug Dragon in the first movie.
Well, to be fair, those scientists including Valentine had their minds altered to behave like dogs. I'd say that's a fairly big punishment. As for the cats, I'll just assume that they're in the basements and got out through a window or something before NIMH crumbles away into nothing.
If they wanted to make a Secret of NIMH sequel, why the heck didn't they just adapt one of the novels that Robert O'Brien's daughter wrote (Racso and the Rats of NIMH, etc.)? They'd have to tweak the story to bring it in line with the first movie (which rung some changes on the novel), but it would have been better than this dreck...and Bluth may have even been on board with it.
Jennifer Schillig And, have the main conflict be that Thorn Valley has a hard time trusting Rasto (I think that was the kid's name in the book), since he was Jenner's son, so, he has to prove himself better by helping Timmy.
I’m surprised that this sequel is not an adaptation of the sequel book, “Rasco and the rats of NIMH” which ironically had Timmy as one of the main protagonists along with a new character Rasco, the son of Jenner. The plot involves them trying to investigate and sabotage a dam construction being built near Thorn Valley before it drowns the whole place.
Hmm... between that little bit about Martin's redemption at the end, and the end of the Portal 2 review... methinks that everyone's favorite musical demon may have a bit of an unspoken backstory.... or at least more of a character than we thought.
Mbunnyj methinks you are right in said assumption. Our mistress of musical hell has something she's hiding that only the angel she reviewed with in portal 2 seems to know.
Mbunnyj I have my own headcanon about Diva's backstory. She was actually an alto singer in the heavenly choir who loved all types of staged music, but fell in love with a rebelling angel. She got informed about all the crappy music and films humans will make and joined in on her lover's lost cause. I also think she was the devil in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," as her job involves trying to collect souls of artists. As of now, after failing to collect enough souls per quota, she is now living on the expansion shelf condemning bad musicals as they embody a mix of lust and greed.
You know, if you go back and look at her other reviews with this knowledge in mind, suddenly a lot of offhand comments start popping out. For example, in Love Never Dies (#11), she says "...and I thought my career went downhill fast". And in Happily Ever After (#29), quote, (Batso is) "the type of evil minion who doesn't have the hang of the whole evil thing. Honestly, I can relate." She's always been giving us little tidbits.
If the prophecy just spoke of "a" son of Jonathan Brisby and didn't name a specific one, why didn't Thorn Valley just take both of them in to train? You could still have Timmy rise as the hero from that if you really wanted to, and at least it makes more sense then just randomly picking him from the start without any specification...
IKR?? That would’ve been an awesome way to show the sibling rivalry and why Martin became resentful and jealous of Timmy. The rats don’t know which son is the chosen one, so both are invited to study and train under Justin’s guidance. Timmy is younger and more athletic, so he’s able to do better in the physical aspect, while Martin focuses on his studies and things like chess, knowing brute strength isn’t everything. Maybe Timmy starts to surpass him in academics as well, making Martin insecure about his capabilities and Timmy gets all the attention while Martin’s accomplishments always get ignored or constantly overshadowed by Timmy. This causes Martin to resent his brother despite Timmy tries apologizing and saying he didn’t mean to outshine him or even wanted to be popular or the hero. Martin gets even more mad, thinking Timmy is just pitying him and maybe finds another rat who doesn’t like all the attention and glory Timmy is getting. They work together on a project to make both look better and capable than Timmy, not knowing they’re losing their sanity by how they’ve let their jealousy consume them. And that’s kinda what I had for now lol
Ooh, I need to look for that one. I'm hoping that, because of how different the death is for Jenner and his cohorts in the book vs. the movie, that the book sequel has the NIMH scientists assume that any of the other escaped rats would have died before Jenner or at around the same time, due to the more typical causes of accidental rat death. Because a world in which the NIMH scientists are no longer looking for the rats makes the forest colony at least plausible. A place that humans won't find unless they're looking for it is totally acceptable if humans AREN'T looking for it, after all.
@@lauraschantz9058 It's called Racso and The Rats of NIMH. Racso is in fact Jenner's wayward son who has left his city colony, after his followers died. The plot revolves around Timmy (or Timothy) and Racso going to Thorn Valley to get better education, while humans are planning to flood the Valley with a dam. IMO It would be a bit hard to adapt in animated feature form because of some changes, but it wouldn't be totally impossible.
About Justin aging well, in the first movie they explained how the injections that had changed the rats' and the mice's DNA had also slowed their aging process. It's one of the reasons why Jonathan Brisby didn't tell Mrs. Brisby about NIMH: she would have grown old while he remained young. Anyway, great review as always. This movie is a spit in the face of Mrs. Brisby, goddamnit.
Never knew of this abomination before now. To quote the records keeper in Star Wars, "If it's not in our records, it doesn't exist". That's how I choose to think of this. It doesn't exist.
Well, to be fair, I’m pretty sure John Carradine (the Great Owl’s original voice) was long dead by this point, so they could hardly use the Great Owl without replacing the actor... But that just raises the question of why this movie was made to begin with, so...
"Seek out the great owl if you ever need help." You mean that owl that terrified her near to death, slept on a pile of the bones of mice he'd eaten, and was clearly annoyed with her for just showing up? Yeah, go to that person for any flimsy old reason you might have.
Also, The Nostalgia Critic lifted out one massive problem in this movie: Everybody treats Timmy like he is the Mouses (Mouse Moses), even though he’s done squat. It would create massive pressure to any other child.
Would have made more sense for Martin to force himself to rise above his lack of being chosen and take out the laboratory, turning the test subjects into a militia to secretly defend Thorn Valley from the outside. Meanwhile Timmy cracks under all the chosen one pressure and, upon finding his brother alive and well and having done his job, flips out and hijacks the militia to try and take the respect he so craves by force. "I was the chosen one. Chosen to rule all of you!" And Martin ends up being the hero and having to stop Timmy.
I wonder if it would have been better if it just wasn't a NIMH story. Random note, Diva - my mom heard your outro music once as I was finishing an episode and really liked it.
m3rrys0ngstr3ss Maybe, as a kid I remember seeing this on Disney Channel, and thinking it was good. A few years back, I finally saw the original, and loved it. It made me realize the sequel was inferior. As this review suggests, on paper, it sounded like a good idea, but the execution and direction was poorly handled. It might be fun for kids, but unfortunately, it doesn’t hold up like the original.
This could've been better if they had cut out the prophecy all together, instead offering ALL of the Brisby children an education because its what Jonathan wanted for them. The film could've focused on each kid growing into their own person and bringing that knowledge they've accrued back home, finding ways to better life for those outside of Thorn Valley. Cause as we've seen with life near the farmhouse, it can be living hell for such small creatures. It could've had a message about trying to pave the way for future generations, in a world that's scary and cruel.
+JamesO'Sullivan That reminds me. I heard the film adaptations of that series are being rebooted with The Silver Chair. Which as it turns out is the PENULTIMATE BOOK in that series.
I really hated how sequels shifting the focus from the previous film's protagonist to a side character who ends up being annoying, unlikable, and a major cut-down from the predecessor's main character.
Imagine how much better it would have been if Don Bluth got to adapt Racso and The Rats Of NIMH, the ACTUAL sequel to the original novel. Timothy goes to Thorn Valley to learn from the rats, but this time, he meets up with Jenner's wayward son, Racso, who isn't actually bad himself, just a bit spoiled and arrogant. Yeah, Jenner in the book wasn't a villain, just a disgruntled secessionist, and Nicodemus is still alive. But still, imagine the implications. Two boys who just became friends, one the son of the heroine, the other the son of the villain, being the subjects of constant comparisons.
Fun fact I saw this on Disney Channel YEARS ago (I think it was either2003 or 2004 because I remember commercials for the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mamsion and Kingdom Hearts II I think) once and had no idea what was going on (in fairness it was at a family Christmas party so I was all over the place) because I think it aired alongside Rescuers Down Under so the plots kind of merged in my head as I only saw bits and pieces of each
The original NIMH had a great voice cast: John Carradine as the Owl, Derek Jacobi as Nicodemus, Elizabeth Hartmann as Mrs. Brisby (best remembered as Sidney Poitier's love interest in A Patch of Blue), Peter Strauss, Paul Shenar and Arthur Malet. Neither cast nor book rise to the level of the original. I'm just surprised you didn't see "Timmy misfires his slingshot" as the double entendre it should have been...
I agree with everything about this review EXCEPT for Just Say Yes. it's an entire song where Eric Idle just hams it up. Take it out of the movie and it's kind of amazing. Although I am speaking as someone who never watched this movie, just heard the song when it got jokingly associated with other, better villains, so I might be biased here.
The only reason I don't own the first NIMH on DVD is it's only available in a two pack with this sequel and I don't want to buy a movie I'll never watch just to own its predecessor.
I can't believe they turned an animated film with it's complex themes into a cheap animated film with a chosen one story and the protagonist’s brother turning into the villain of the movie.
No....this move was worse than bad. This movie was insultingly, painfully, heinously vile. I hate it. The Secret of Nimh was Don Bluth's masterpiece. Everything about it was extraordinary....especially Mrs. Frisby. In this film, the true hero (Mrs. Frisby) is barely recognized despite her noble and heroic deeds in the first film. In the Secret of Nimh we establish that the father was a hero to the rats and mice who escaped Nimh because he saved them and we see quite clearly that Mrs. Frisby is a hero in her own right. She bravely volunteered to help them drug the cat, she helped Justin and Mr. Ages save the rats....she saved her children from the farmer.....there is NOTHING in the first movie that shows young Timmy has any special significance. He is sick through most of it and then he only gets one line. And there is NOTHING in this movie that acknowledges Mrs. Frisby as a hero. In this movie, Martin is mean to his brother for no reason other than being jealous that Timmy was chosen over him and then Timmy is taken to Thorn Valley and immediately hailed as a glorified hero but he has done NOTHING to prove himself one (other than have a heroic father). He keeps making foolish mistakes like abandoning his post, disobeying Jonathan, putting the girl in danger....and he doesn't suffer any consequences for his actions. He doesn't LEARN anything. The only half-baked "heroic" moment he did was save his brother who was shoehorned in as the movie's villain and would have made a much more interesting protagonist.....because we actually KNOW something about him from the first movie. And where IS Mrs. Frisby's statue? If anyone deserved a place of honor in Thorn Valley it was her. She literally saved them all.
Yeah, and she was just an ordinary field mouse; no genetic-enhancements to make her special...just an simple little field mouse on a journey to protect her family.
Geesh, when did the movie suddenly turn into Pinky & The Brain? All I hear is this when they're on screen--> Timmy: Gee Martin, what do you wanna do tonight? Martin: The same thing we do every night, Timmy. Try to take over the world. Off Key Chorus --> They’re Timmy and the Brain. Yes, Timmy and the Brain. One is a genius and also insane. To take over the world, they’ll butt-rape this sequel. They’re wimpy, they’re Timmy and the Brain Brain Brain Brain… Martin: YES!!! *end song*
You can make a movie about a chosen one who's been told he's destined for greatness since childhood, paraded around even before he did anything and as a result, feels like he's not treated the way he deserves when he's not given daring quests and treated like a child as a teen. I mean shit, how cool it'd be if TIMMY was the one who turned to the dark side duo to his arrogance and inferiority-superiority complex? There could be a prophecy twist (like, he's destined to stop NIMH for good, expect he immedietly takes over and plans to take Thorn Valley instead. After all, he's the chosen one and he can do no wrong, right? Thorn Valley will never disrespect him again once he shows them he's no longer a child...) Jenny is already a better hero than he is, so it could tirn into a "the unchosen one saves the day" plot.
So...Secret of NIMH 2 is about a mouse trying to stop his brother who wouldn't be evil if it hadn't been for that slapped on prophecy. In other words, if they didn't build Timmy up like that, none of this would've happened! Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
This movie has the exact opposite problem of Chicken Little. In CL, the characters belittle the main character, and treat him like dogshit every waking moment, while in this, the characters treat Timmy like a god, even though he hasn't done anything.
You know, a better idea might have been to introduce Jenny earlier on or have her act as the main protagonist. As the main protagonist, maybe we could have seen how she grew up in the labratory basement and watched her parents suffer, giving her incentive to escape and find help. Somehow, she could learn about the legendary Chosen One, and learn something that makes her believe that he can help her. This would lead her to seek out Timmy, and she could find out that he was actually clueless and selfish, and seemingly unable to help her. Timmy's arc in the story could be bettering himself, and actually learning when to shut up and follow orders (a virtue that clashes greatly with his biggest vice, which is his resentment of acting as a second string. It could also be represented as him being too prideful about his status as "The Chosen One" to ever listen to anyone else.) Then they could have formed a real romantic connection if Jenny played a part in helping Tim become a better person. Honestly, there should just be a "twist" where we find out that Timmy isn't the chosen one, Jenny is. Also, I think we can all agree that Martin's disappearance needed to have more of an impact on the plot and on Timmy, rather than just being mentioned during a conversation with Jenny. The disappearance (and probable death!) of his brother should have a much greater effect on Timmy than it had in the movie. He should have a moment all to himself where he meets his brother again and is horrified by what he's become. Martin should be played far darker than he is. First off, he absolutely needs an outfit change-- I'd personally suggest something more mad-scientist-y than his present wizard garb. There should also be a more clear distinction between what experiments were Valentine's and what experiments were Martin's, to cement the idea that he is a bad person who does bad things. And if the movie wants us to truly feel sorry for him, then there should be an aspect of genuine instability to his character, something that shows us that his mind has been broken from those years of abuse. He'd be a much more compelling and sympathetic villain if we saw that, on the inside, he's not evil-- he's just a scared and confused kid who's lashing out at a world that failed to protect him.
Or they could have flipped the script entirely. Here is my idea.... Movie goes basically the same ui until the reach the lab. Timmy meets Martin, we see the militia, scientists are dogs. But, Martin is a good guy. He rose above the torture and chose to be the guy on the outside protecting those inside, forming the militia to protect Thorn Valley from humans and other major threats. It is how they hadn't been discovered yet. This is exciting for Martin cause "Hey lil bro. I'm alive and I can help you be the chosen one!" Cause he came to terms over the years. But, seeing all that Martin has done and basically doing Timmy's job, Timmy snaps Nd hijacks the Militia to take the respect he feels he was owed by force. Then Ages and Martin meet and team up to stop the now racing mad timmy, broken by years of pressure, and it turns out Martin was the chosen one after all cause he worked past his issues.
When I was in elementary school I took choir. One of the songs we practiced singing was “Somewhere Out There”. Our teacher informally called it “The Sad Mouse Song”.
For the longest time they threatened a PREQUEL, of all things: The Secret of NIMH 3: The Beginning (so original, wow) was supposed to cover everything already covered in Nicodemus' flashback sequence, ending right before the raid on the house that got Jonathan Brisby killed. Now there's talk of a live-action remake...but like the Australian live-action version of The Last Unicorn (which was reportedly going to have a CGI Red Bull face off against a mare with a horn glued to her forehead, can't you just feel the magic), hopefully it'll expire in Development Hell.
I dunno. Maybe it is best not to remake something as cherished as Secret of NIMH, but sometimes, I believe that if a classic deserves better tribute than a crappy sequel, maybe the remake is a better way of doing it justice. Charlotte's Web was an animated classic that got a crappy direct-to-DVD sequel in 2003, but then did get a decent live-action remake a couple years later. But yes, other times it's better to leave a classic alone.
The Cinematic Mind The Secret of NIMH Holiday Special The Secret of NIMH 7: A Rat and Mouse Story (It'd be a BrisbyxJustin love story) A NIMH Tale: A NIMH and an American Tail Crossover
Okay, I haven’t seen the original in several years, so correct me if I’m wrong... but wasn’t _Mrs_ Brisby the hero of the story? Why is everyone talking about it like it was Jonathan? I know he did something in the backstory before the first movie’s events, but... does Mrs Brisby (forget her first name) not get any credit _at all?_
Don Bluth has made some booty tier movies, but you know it's bad when he didn't approve this sequel. There's one thing that I noticed: why didn't Mrs. Brisby get her own statue? She held a magical amulet and almost burned her paws to a crisp to save her family. Along with that she saved all of the rats from getting poisoned to death. She definitely deserves her own statue. It's unfair that Mrs. Brisby didn't get a statue while Timothy got one for doing a lot less (it also doesn't help that he made bad decisions throughout the entire movie).
And it doesn't help that almost all problems Timmy helps solve only came to be due to Timmy being hailed as a hero, and growing arrogant from all worship, in the first place.
Timmy did NOTHING. He was asleep through most of the first film and gets ONE line, where he's whining at his mom for having to stay in bed. Then the so-called "prophecy" in this film states that "a SON of Jonathan Frisby would be chosen to save the rats when Nimh reared its ugly head again" (this could have EASILY been Martin BTW. The prophecy didn't specify WHICH son and Martin was a much more interesting character. Also, I think it was LUDICROUS that they made Martin the villain and they barely gloss over the fact that he went missing. Like "oh BTW, Mom says my brother is missing and I didn't even bother to go home and help her look for him because I am so busy being a "hero") So Timmy goes to Thorn Valley and is IMMEDIATELY hailed as this glorious hero.....but he does NOTHING to earn this title. He abandons his post, putting his comrades in danger. He disobeys Jonathan and Mr. Ages....repeatedly....he puts the girl mouse in danger and almost gets her killed by Martin. The only half-baked heroic thing he does is go back into the burning building to save Martin from a fire that HE started. And he gets a statue. Where IS Mrs. Frisby's statue? Why isn't she in Thorn Valley being hailed as a hero?
This movie sucks, but in defense of pre adolescent Timmy, he sings the best of the three and is only in the movie for like a minute. I also have an idea for an improvement: Timmy doubts himself the whole time he is in Thorn valley, and Martin going missing drives him to try and live up to everything his brother represented. For Martin, I think him becoming evil could work. I would have Martin searching for the original NIMH serum to save an elderly and dying Mrs Brisby, and getting caught. Once caught, he is given a different serum and it scrambles his brain, but since Martin had some of the original serum in him and his mind was more advanced, it would take a traumatic event to take effect. He manages to escape and return home to find his mother had died in his absence and the shock scrambles his brain and makes him stronger. In his anger and grief he returns to NIMH and persuades the mice who were still there to rebel, and they manage to poison the scientists and kill them. Unknown to the other mice, Martin began to slip the remaining serum that was used on him to brainwash the stronger mice. Jenny realizes right before Martin takes over due to her parents haveing the original serum. Martin takes over with the brainwashed mice and tries to learn to bring back the dead to save his mom, the serum twisting his mind into thinking he could do it. Meanwhile in Thorn Valley slowly mice start to disappear, and Jenny comes, begging for help. Timmy bonds with her over her lost family as he lost his mother, but due to the danger and lack of weapons, the rats of Thorn Vally refuse to help. Timmy runs off to help Jenny and they bond during the journey to NIMH and when they finally arrive they find that Martin has enslaved half the mice and has nearly killed the other half in his experiments. Seeing his brother who was put before him sends Martin into a crazed frenzy and tries to kill Timmy. Timmy and Jenny barely escape and find Timmy’s two sisters who had been working on a cure. They saw that something changed after their motehr’s death, and had followed Martin to NIMH and saw what he did. They had worked on a cure for years and finally made it. They had found a way to counterattack the serum that Martin gave to everyone and was forced into him. They slip the antidote into the moves food, and everyone save for Martin is rescued. Seeing his plans crumble Martin breaks down into a sobbing and laughing mess. Timmy gives him the antidote and they take him to Thorn Valley. After a while his mind returns to a better state, but he can’t remember anything past his mother’s death. It is agreed that no one can tell him what happened, as in his fragile mindset he would go insane with guilt. The movie ends with a new statue of the entire Brisby family being erected in honor of everything they did and went through.
...Yeah, there's an interesting germ of an idea here, and you're absolutely right in what it is, but... The sequel to The Secret of NIMH, a film with a really interesting and unlikely hero being a generic ass Boy Of Destiny? Seriously? Actually, there's a second interesting germ of an idea here (though seemingly accidnetal) - Boy Of Destiny's predestination of heroicness creates the problem he winds up solving due to his sense of entitlement to a more interesting role in the team than being on watch from being the Boy Of Destiny? And him being the Boy Of Destiny helped create the villain his party was facing due to a jealous sibling? Play that stuff up and you've got something approaching Greek Tragedy levels of irony, and that's an interesting story. Whereas here it all seems like it's like that due to bad writing. On the plus side, while a shadow of the animation of the original, that looked surprisingly well animated for something that's direct to video...
Mrs. Brisby is a character who lives constantly in the shadow of her dead hero spouse and does what she does not for fame and accolades, but because it just needs to be done to save her family. Hers is a story of quiet heroism, not statues in the town square. Timmy is just a half-step away from being a Mary Sue. Everybody expects greatness from him, but for no real reason and to no real purpose. There’s no actual conflict or stakes evident in this story.
Have you ever considered doing the Star Wars Holiday Special? It IS actually a musical, though this is often forgotten. Would make a good, errm, holiday special.
When was NIMH evil? The rats were never at all unhappy about having been former subjects of intelligence-enhancement experiments. I don't know if it was in the film, but in the book it says that the Rats of NIMH took their name from the sign outside of the laboratory they escaped from: The National Institute of Mental Health.
I love The Secret of Nimh and this just looks plain terrible. Did Timmy actually do anything to live up to the prophecy of being the chosen one? Harry Potter defeats the darkest wizard of his time and Anakin Skywalker kills an evil tyrant that was putting a stranglehold on the entire galaxy, I know he helped bring about the evil, but he still stopped it. It looks all Timmy really did was set a building on fire and save his evil brother. Also the off screen redemption of Martin seems stupid. It actually would have been a lot more interesting if Timmy actually made Martin see the error of his ways and Martin saves the day making him the son of Jonathan that the prophecy was really talking about and they picked Timmy by mistake. Besides it is kind of messed up that they just took Timmy to Thorn Valley and left his mother and his siblings there when it is because of Timmy’s mom that they even had a Thorn Valley in the first place. They go on about how much of a hero Jonathan is and ignore the fact that his wife was as much of a hero as he was, if I didn’t know any better I would say that there is some sexism going on in Thorn Valley.
Okay, you've taken on plenty of 2nd tier entries that are almost guaranteed disasters. Time to tear into big studio era bombs like 1954 's "Brigadoon", 1955's "Guys & Dolls , 1956's "Carousel", or 1962's "Flower Drum Song".
I LOVED The Secret of NIMH, and thought I was going to have a damn stroke when I first watched the sequel. Some things can be overlooked (For example, why is the rest of the Brisby family left behind at the Fitzgibbons' farm--especially when NIMH continues to turn the place inside out--only to turn up in Thorn Valley at the end anyway? IIRC they even shipped Auntie Shrew over), some decisions are arguably good (I actually enjoyed bits of Eric Idle's creepy song) but 90% of it is pure obscenity. Oddly, it's CLOTHING that made me give up on any hope of liking the mess early on. In the original, aside from humans only the rats, the Brisbys and Auntie Shrew wear anything (presumably Shrew picked the habit up from Mrs. B); in the sequel, even bloody insects wear suits and shoes. (I won't ask what those shoes are made of, or where they're sold.) Timmy and Ages share a moment about wearing underpants, which is clearly something neither of them do. Snot moment not in the review: the climactic shot of the cage flying upwards, then beginning to fall back down into the flames is a cheap imitation of Bruce Willis' ejector-seat stunt in Die Hard 2. Snot moment #2: That big rat always accompanying Justin? Brutus. Yeah, THAT Brutus.
You'd think that someone in the city would want to dedicate a statue to the one mouse who kept everyone from getting poisoned and saved her entire family from drowning horribly.
No, but let's give a statue and throw a parade to the whiny butt who did the absolute bare minimum of "heroing"
I read in an article about this sequel that Don Bluth would have made Timothy the villain. That makes more sense. Martin’s stronger, doesn’t get sick all the time and is smarter. He saved Timmy in the first scene, which was made their dad a hero. Timothy is smart enough to set machinations in order to become the chosen one or something. It’d be kinda cool if done properly.
Ah, but he is the son of that other mouse's husband Jonathan.
There's at least one thing that's almost smart about Martins plan, and that is to attack under the full moon.
1. Most of Thorn Valley will be asleep and unprepared.
2. They're flying on pigeons, not owls or other nocturnal birds, so they'll need the extra light from the full moon to see properly.
Also, what's THE derogatory term for pigeons?
FLYING. RATS.
*Curtains drop*
*Yep. This is big brain time*
Had this movie been handled better instead of being another DVD sequel to Nimh and handled by either one of the Booth Brothers, the film could have worked, especially with the flying pigeons and army of rats invading Thorn Valley.
"Good night children. sorry to keep you a prisoner!"
Thats hilarious
Emilio Bustamante "What the hell!? When did the rats of NIMH become a hostage cult?"
- Nostalgia Critic
I clicked on 'like' out of accident because of laugh spasms while trying to click 'show responses'. But I'll keep it, because you've written the truth.
😂😂😂
Every single time I hear that line, it sounds fake. It must take true skill to write a line that outstandingly bad in a movie full of awkward writing! 😂
If you excuse me I am going to ask why
I wonder why caterpillars in fiction are never portrayed as the children they're supposed to be...
Have you ever considered reviewing The Secret of NIMH 2: Penis to the Rescue (ex: us voting for you to review it sometime, maybe next year when AniMat and Jambareeqi might review this shitfest ofa follow-up)??
LOL is that really the actual title 🧐
I also extend that question to Max Lucado and his Hermie series.
That's just nasty 🤮@@kieranstark7213
Well, if it helps, _The Buzz on Maggie_ portrayed a caterpillar as an actual infant - namely in the episode “The Candidate”.
However, the show mainly focuses on flies, so maggots are portrayed much the same way.
One thing they kept from the first movie was the fact that the original rats of Nimh have a slowed aging process. It was a very powerful scene when Nicodemus revealed to Mrs. Brisby that her husband never told her about his connection to the rats cause he didn't want her to know that he was going to outlive her. It was a really heartbreaking scene. So if anything this dumb movie got right is that the rats like Justin haven't aged.
Except the film also ruins that concept as well, because despite how many years have passed by the film's end Mrs. Frisby is still alive and well; when being an ordinary field mouse she should have either been dead before the start of the film or on her death bed.
IAmTheUnison good point
@@IAmTheUnison she probably got mutated by the magic rock thing Nicodemus gave her and that's why she's doomed to live a long life of becoming a lich queen.
So... he save their town and all they got him is "Jonathan Brisby and son" statue instead of "Timothy Brisby" statue. And no statue for his mother at all. Yeah, that's seems fair.
Excuse me while I go scream at a wall.
Quite frankly their not a town worth saving or fighting over
Yet more proof that N.I.M.H. should have had its funding cut LONG ago. Intelligent rats my eye...
Yep. 😌Misogyny anyone? 😓I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Mrs. Brisby warn the rats that NIMH was coming for them in the original movie!?😌🤬
6:41 WHOA WHOA...hold the phone. Wasn't the whole point of moving to Thorn Valley because the rats wanted to become completely self-sufficient and not rely on stealing from humans? Ugh, this friggin' sequel, i swear...
MrXemnas1992 Yup! Just another case of bad-writing/character-botching/lack of attention to continuity/IDIOT PLOT.
@@jacobbelow4136 Aka a bad fanfiction that somehow got animated!
"Upcycling materials". Yes, they have food, but they can't just grow metals or the like and have shown using human sized items such as beakers, even in the first movie
That must be a new level of dedication, finding THREE voice actors, NONE of whom can sing worth a damn.
Gregory House What about Eric Idle?
mariic2 I meant the ones for Timmy.
@@mariic2 Eric Idle was probably the best thing about this movie.
"Remaking Watership Down with Muppet bunnies."
Should we tell her about Watership Fraggle?
mariic2 I remember that Robot Chicken skit, LOL!
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa??!!!
@@questworldiangreenknight7455 Watership Fraggle was a Robot Chicken sketch.
@@Jaceblue04 ooooh. That makes so much more sense, but at the same time WHY?!😂😂😂
The one that had Chris Evans
I'm still confused on how Timothy's the youngest of the Brisby kids. Wasn't the order supposed to be Teresa, then Martin, then Timothy and then Cynthia? Also, if Thorn Valley's people had worshipped Jonathan so much, why didn't they bring his wife and children to live with them?
...because bad writing.
But Teresa was a girl, and that would have given the movies cooties.
Or they just killed Cynthia off for scripts sake. You bastards!
@@minespatchGod forbid the writers find out about trans people lol.
Especially trans women.
Geez...Why does the animation look like something you'd see in one of those 90's educational PC games?
Because 90s
produced by WANG ANIMATION
Still better than Foodfight's "animation."
Cuz it’s cheap
Jumpstart has better animation then this movie
Okay, can I just say for the record how much I loathe the idea of Martin being the villain in this movie? He was my favorite character in the original Secret of NIMH, and I felt so much for him, Teresa and Cynthia. Timmy was almost a non-figure in the story given that he was sick in bed the entire time, but the other children helped anchor us in the stakes and better represented what Mrs. Brisby was fighting for. When the Brisby house almost sank, it was heart-wrenching seeing those three children we've grown to love over the course of the film trapped inside. So to have this sequel completely demonize and (in the case of the girls) ignore these characters who were so lovable in the original is incredibly upsetting. It's the same way I felt when Maleficent turned the three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty into bad Three Stooge knock-offs.
Not to mention, this sequel had turned the other characters into jerks. They scold Timothy for being reckless and arrogant when it was their fault for praising him for just being Jonathan's son and nothing else. Then there's the fact that they had refused to help Jenny's family and kept her as some prisoner. Who are we supposed to root for again?
At least you can kind of excuse the fairies thing in Maleficent as her view on them.
the1koolkitty @ the1koolkitty PREACH! This film did my man Martin dirty. UGH. 😑
Ironically I read somewhere that Don Bluth wanted to make a sequel with Timmy as the villain.
the1koolkitty They ripped off the plot line of Martin's jealousy from the subplot about Nuka and Kovu from Lion King 2. However, that subplot worked because it didn't involve any stupid plot twists, and, it was because Nuka was rejected by his own father, who instead favored Kovu, even though Kovu wasn't Scar's biological son.
I always think about how a proper sequel to _The Secret of NIMH_ should be handled.
First of all, it should have started off with the unveiling of Mrs. Brisby's statue. Mrs. Brisby gets a letter in the mail from Justin inviting her to the ceremony. She, and her entire family, get a ride on Jeremy as they enter Thorn Valley. They're greeted by Mr. Ages and Justin as they escort Mrs. Brisby, and her family to their living quarters.
While there the Brisby kids decide to spend some time exploring the town, before the unveiling starts. They agree to meet at a certain time, and go their separate ways until then. They're old enough to make their own decisions, but Timmy (being the youngest) is told to stay under constant supervision. The girls go shopping, while Martin and Timmy visit the library to learn more about their dad. Mrs. Brisby reunites with Justin as they catch up on old times.
After years of development and resources, Thorn Valley flourishes under Justin's watch, but faces resistance from those who believe he should step aside due to his age, and let the younger blood take control. Even though the rats of NIMH age slower than the average species, large amounts of stress and responsibilities protecting the Valley have decreased Justin's health by a considerable margin. At the same time, a spy from NIMH is suspected within the facility, and would cause great harm to Thorn Valley if information is leaked about its location.
That's basically what I came up with so far. If anyone has a better story in mind, feel free to brain storm.
Good start, it holds the story for the first five minutes or so, but it needs more tension. Who would the spy be? Why would they be a spy? How does the Brisby family connect to the spy? What is the plot relevance of the girls shopping and the brothers going to the library?
Sidestepping those issues for now and working backwards from the end of this hypothetical movie, I think the theme of the film should be something akin to passing-of-the-torch. Mrs Brisby is an old woman now and it's time for her children to look after her like she looked after them when they were young. All four of them need individual arcs to reflect their growth and which can be neatly woven together in the climax. Given that Mrs Brisby is just a genetically ordinary field mouse with no enhanced lifespan, her children will have to come to terms with her mortality which IMO would make a stronger subplot than the shoehorned romance so many other films insist on.
@@helenanilsson5666 I also think Mrs. Brisby's aging should be a contributing factor. I think her and Justin can have a conversation about how growing old can be both a gift and a curse. That it can make you wiser, and appreciate what life has to offer, but it also forces you to acknowledge that time waits for no one (no matter the life span).
Justin would also make a proposal for the Brisbys to live in Thorn Valley. Not only for Mrs. Brisby's sake, but also for her children's education and well being. She adamantly agrees her children deserve that, but she also holds a strong attachment to her old house in the field.
1.) I'd say this spy is either a Manchurian candidate from NIMH (unaware that he's a spy until a certain trigger sets him off), a Jenner sympathizer whose twisted ideology sees Justin as a false leader, or he's a poor soul being forced into a situation he doesn't want to be in (thus helping the real spies). He collects herbs, and spices for his business, and also for medicinal purposes.
2.) Honestly, wouldn't you want to explore a great place like Thorn Valley when given the opportunity? I totally would. By doing this it gives the place a sense of history and world building. As the characters explore the place, they learn more about it, and get use to the idea of living there if they ever decide to move.
*-Teresa* (the oldest) would be the responsible type. She's very feminine in nature, but knows when to put her foot down when push comes to shove. She's calm but also self confident. She gets annoyed with Martin for his massive ego, but tries to do be more diplomatic.
*-Martin* (the second oldest) would be the macho, jockey type who often butts heads with Teresa in terms of dominance. He's a bit of a self-centered lady's man, and overestimates his abilities, but would know when to back off when his temper gets the better of him. He wants to be a good role model to his younger brother (Timothy), and tries to be the man of the family. He also learns to be patient around Timothy, and knows when to be straight with others.
*-Cynthia* (the second youngest) is a kind-hearted soul who wants people to get along. She has great empathy for her siblings, and passive in nature, but would try to find a solution to resolve the matter. When backed into a corner, her inner fury is unleashed, and a force to be reckoned with. Cynthia relates more to her younger brother (age wise), but loves to hang out with Teresa when doing certain activities together.
*-Timothy* (the youngest) is a book worm, and wants to pursue a career in medicine after surviving pneumonia. Never knowing his dad, he wants to learn more about him, and also find a way to help their mom's waning health. Martin often teases him for being a nerd, and would often try to toughen him up. He looks up to his older brother, and would often spar with him, but also feels comfortable being an introvert. The spy would probably be in the library learning information about Justin, until he stumbles upon Timothy, and they bond over books, knowledge, and helping others. As they get to know each other more and more, the spy offers to help their mother's decreasing lifespan.
Again, it's just more spit balling from my end. But it's fun to speculate.
@@liveslex5581 Hell, we could even find some homegrown musicians, animators, and song writers to make a better movie. The internet is amazing at letting us do that.
Helena Nilsson
“How doesnthe Brisby family connect to the spy?”
Easy, make them possible suspects. Remember the Council Rats had the hardest time respecting Brisby because she was an “outsider” and only started respecting her when her relation to Johnathon was told to then (as well as Jenner manipulating them to help).
Have some of the rats give Brisby’s family the stink eye for being an outsider and some feeling she shouldn’t be given a free pass because she helped ONE time a long time ago (when she did it because she wanted them to help her).
Also, have the kids accidentally get into some kind of trouble or accidentally be framed for some trouble. Boom! Instant distrust, Actual Conflict, and Motivation for the Brisby family to clear their names and find the culprit.
... Sorry, I watch a lot of Murder She Wrote, so I love setting up a good mystery
Here's now I'd do it.
- Brisby is getting old. Her children are aging slower, and will be on their own. Brisby knows that her children are not ordinary mice though, and should not live as ordinary mice - they need someone who can take care of them and see they are educated, and there is only one possibility for that to happen: The rats.
- Act One: The quest for the Rats. A bit of cross-country trek, as the aged Brisby and children follow clues and rumors to find the place where the rats fled to escape detection.
- Act Two: The rats are found, and their community is... actually doing pretty well. Very, very well. The rats are smart - seriously smart, and now they have space to florish their society has turned into what appears (on the surface) like quite the utopia. Of course it isn't, because we need conflict for the story. The children are immediately swept up in the wonder of it. Brisby is alienated: This is just too much for an unaugmented mouse.
- So it's time for our conflict! Which shall come in the form of meeting the local wildlife. While the rats have been advancing their technology to a level that would make the humans envious, they have also inherited some other traits of intelligence: They look down upon the less fortunate wildlife with contempt. Their irrigation has ruined the local habitat, their monoculture fields provide little foraging and are defended from scavenging birds. Local resistance has formed, but it is quite helpless, and the rats do not care. Yes, we're going for the old environmental cliche. It works... but we shall be subverting this shortly.
- Now we need a hero, and a villain. For this we need first a villain, who advocate two approaches to dealing with the conflict. The villain rat favors aggression: He won't openly advocate killing all the non-augmented animals, but he does advocate driving them all away with a new super-weapon: A mad science spray that will poison all non-augmented creatures, forcing them to leave.
- Meanwhile, our hero - one of the children, don't care which, they are all interchangeable - finds the deepest secret of NIMH: In a vault beneath the city, the rats have been conducting animal experiments of their own, capturing local creatures as test subjects. What foul purpose are they seeking? It certainly *looks* evil... but now it is time for our first big reveal.
- Rat society is aware of the conflict with outsiders, and there are two factions of extremists - both with their own ethically-questionable way to deal with it. One faction sees the wild creatures are stupid, sub-rat, inferior being and seeks to get rid of them - they tell themselves that they are doing the right thing, justifying that they are protecting the community. The other, weaker faction has been using them to research the one thing that most rats consider too dangerous to research: Themselves. They want to recreate the research that granted the rats such intelligence in the first place, and amplify the effect into something far greater: A virus capable of rewriting animals at a deeper level, which will make rats so greatly super-intelligent they will be able to rule the world - subjugating all others to their benevolent dictatorship. They justify their actions by saying that the rats will surely be discovered one day, and the only way to survive human discovery is to be smarter even than the humans.
- Both of these factions are presented as villains, because they rather clearly are. They are villains who believe they are acting for the greater good, like all the best villains, but their true motives are elitism and a fantasy-racism. Both seek to use the children as pawns, seeking their support, as a respected outsider could tip the balance of power. They science-solves-everything leader even offers Timothy a gift - a necklace containing a vial of their almost-perfected intelligence virus, telling him that it could make his mother as smart as any rat.
- Final act: The balance is tipped. Not by the children, but by Brisby: He own strength of character, seeking to see her children are educated even though they will enter a world she can never truly be part of, convinces the rat leadership that the cost of *both* these plans is too high. They will not become like the humans.
- This drives the leader of the kill-em-all faction into breakdown - fearing a rebellion of 'unintelligent' life, and his own reputation, he attempts to activate the dispersal machine. Now we get our climax, a chase through the bowels of the town machinery in a desperate effort to stop the activation of the death machine, finally arriving at the core - but the mice are too small, too slow - they can't stop it. We get the mandatory all-is-lost moment as the machine activates - and to make us really care, Brisby is the first to get hit by the gas cloud.
- Now it's time for Timothy to save everyone - with his smarts. He can't stop the release of the toxin... but then he realises there's another way. He risks his life by jumping into the machine and forcing his vial into a pipe. Kill-em-all leader tries to chase and stop this, but he is too heavy for the frail pipework and falls to his off-screen death.
- For a moment the rats look on in confusion.
- Then worry.
- Then absolute horror as they realize what Timothy has just done.
- As the climax is over, Brisby and the other non-rats begin to cough and awaken.
In an epilogue the community is seen again.. changed. The rat school has expanded now - greatly so, with new species seen among the students. An older, very frail-looking Brisby sits among them, learning to read. The rats are not alone now: With their research gone airborne, the entire valley shares in their intelligence. The former head researcher is stripped of his position for unethical experimentation, but still free. The rats are humbled: They are no longer superior in mind to all other animals. All are welcome now.
Now, isn't that a better story?
(Post-credit sequence: Jeremy is captured. As the camera pans out we see the trap, and more like it, all bearing a logo: N.I.M.H.)
So I recently saw the film again, and realized these people didn't even pay attention to the SMALLEST details.
-NIHM is like Lady and the Tramp in that you only see the humans' faces long enough to vaguely know what they look like. Meanwhile the scientists in the sequel have their faces front and center.
-The thing that made the rats smarter was an INJECTION, not any sort of shocking.
-Mrs. Brisby and Auntie Shrew should by all accounts be dead by now because of how slow Timmy should be aging.
-There were THIRTEEN mice that got the intelligence boost, not six.
-The Great Owl is supposed to be daunting to get to, so why is nobody questioning the ruse Jeremy is putting on.
-Cats aren't sapient in this universe.
-Most importantly, the whole damn point of going to Thorn Valley was to the rats didn't have to steal anymore. Having a scene where they steal things ruins the point of the first movie entirely.
I get the impression the writers never watched the original at all with how much they got wrong.
Agreed.
"Make the Most of Your Life" sounds life "Welcome to Duloc" from Shrek played straight as something grand and not something funny.
jade smith 'Welcome to Duloc' is already a parody on 'It's a Small World'! Any film with a song that welcomes newcomers that makes THAT song good (as is the case with this movie) has accomplished something truly HORRENDOUS!
Please keep off of the grass, shine your shoes, wipe your... face.
I know right lol 🤣
I think what’s ironic with this film is the original Secret of NIMH book had a sequel which they could had adapted. The only thing they would had to change is how to explain how Jenner had a son when he died in the first film.
Jenner also was not a villain in the books, and died (semi)-heroically for his son's sake.
You know what the REALLY ironic thing about Jenner's character transition for adaptation is? Jenner is...NICODEMUS' BROTHER! *Dun, Dun, Duuuuuuuuuunnnn....!!!!
Jacob Below HOLY SHIT.
Jacob Below what?!
@@KrazyKelor And is implied to have died offscreen too after splitting from the main group awhile back.
Also, I hate to play the "sexism" card, but damn if this movie isn't sexist. Mrs. Brisby gets no recognition for her heroism in the first movie and Timmy gets the glory and praise and statue at the end despite Jenny actually being the one who stopped the villain among other proactive heroism...what the actual hell, movie?
Don't worry, it's a valid use of the sexism card.
Yeah, and it's worth remembering too that Mrs. Frisby did all that she did without being genetically-altered! She was just a simple field mouse who saved a bunch of self-absorbed lab rats ALONG WITH her own family, so I agree...Where's Her Damn Statue!
MrXemnas1992 @ MrXemnas1992 It also doesn't help the fact that Teresa and Cynthia were just background dressing compared to their major roles in the first film. 😑
The fact that her incompetent brat gets a statue after doing the bare minimum yet she gets thrown into the background, barely mentioned, and ZERO statue despite being the reason the rats AND her kids are even alive is infuriating.
You have a point, though they also ignore Justine's heroics too, as he helped Brisby too, and defeated Jenner.
Meanwhile, the kid gets praise just for existing, which granted feeds into his character flaw of "imposter syndrome," (a trait not seen often) but they should regard the others too.
In all fairness, it's mentioned in both the movie and novel that the NIMH treatments slowed the aging process for the rodents. That's why Jonathan was so reluctant to tell his wife about it--he didn't want her burdened by the idea that he would stay young while she grew older and died.
I can't blame Don Bluth for not approving of this abomination of a Sequel.
Brandon Roberts pretty much
He didn't approve of the Land Before Time sequels either.
He also never approved of how Thumbelina OR A Troll in Central Park came out, either.
And he got so fed up with "Pebble and the Penguin" that he TOOK HIS NAME OFF THE PICTURE.
Best of my knowledge Don Bluth didn't approve of ANY of the sequels to his work...with the possible exception of "Fievel Goes West", but I can't speak with any certainty on that.
+ultraofrahfan1 Well, nevermind. I guess he just generally didn't like sequels. ^^
Oi where’s Mrs. Brisby’s statue?!
That's exactly what I was wondering.
Sexism
At the Boulevard of Broken Dreams!
@@Reapermaskhybrid Where the city sleeps?
She deserves to have the statue, not her dorky son
Mrs. Brisby is one of my favorite female heroes in animation. It pisses me off that she was left to this. I know it’s probably because her voice actor died but still!
That's so sad 😞
1. Annoying cats that were adducted are tortured and experimented on by the villain (he himself was also experimented on)
2. Villain, along with the evil scientists who remorselessly experimented on the animals are set free
3. Annoying Cats (who are just as much of victims as the villains themselves) are left to die a fiery, melty and very claustrophobic death in a elevator, while villains who did the experiments get out alive and well.
That's a pretty ruthless way for are "heroes" to dispose of what amouts to 2 random mooks, at the least the other Thorn Valley rats had the common decency and tact to just drug Dragon in the first movie.
Well, to be fair, those scientists including Valentine had their minds altered to behave like dogs. I'd say that's a fairly big punishment. As for the cats, I'll just assume that they're in the basements and got out through a window or something before NIMH crumbles away into nothing.
my favorite is how martin suddenly lost his british accent after he stopped being evil
Well, statistically speaking the British make evil look good
Gotta get that Eric Idle out!
If they wanted to make a Secret of NIMH sequel, why the heck didn't they just adapt one of the novels that Robert O'Brien's daughter wrote (Racso and the Rats of NIMH, etc.)? They'd have to tweak the story to bring it in line with the first movie (which rung some changes on the novel), but it would have been better than this dreck...and Bluth may have even been on board with it.
Jennifer Schillig And, have the main conflict be that Thorn Valley has a hard time trusting Rasto (I think that was the kid's name in the book), since he was Jenner's son, so, he has to prove himself better by helping Timmy.
Amusingly, those sequel novels have better writing then this movie.
Eric Idle in this film is just so glorious here in the most bizarre way possible.
"If redemption were that easy, I would..."
Let's pretend you were going to say "be out of a job".
I’m surprised that this sequel is not an adaptation of the sequel book, “Rasco and the rats of NIMH” which ironically had Timmy as one of the main protagonists along with a new character Rasco, the son of Jenner. The plot involves them trying to investigate and sabotage a dam construction being built near Thorn Valley before it drowns the whole place.
Hmm... between that little bit about Martin's redemption at the end, and the end of the Portal 2 review... methinks that everyone's favorite musical demon may have a bit of an unspoken backstory.... or at least more of a character than we thought.
Mbunnyj methinks you are right in said assumption. Our mistress of musical hell has something she's hiding that only the angel she reviewed with in portal 2 seems to know.
Mbunnyj I have my own headcanon about Diva's backstory. She was actually an alto singer in the heavenly choir who loved all types of staged music, but fell in love with a rebelling angel. She got informed about all the crappy music and films humans will make and joined in on her lover's lost cause. I also think she was the devil in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," as her job involves trying to collect souls of artists. As of now, after failing to collect enough souls per quota, she is now living on the expansion shelf condemning bad musicals as they embody a mix of lust and greed.
I headcanon that she’s a fallen angel
You know, if you go back and look at her other reviews with this knowledge in mind, suddenly a lot of offhand comments start popping out. For example, in Love Never Dies (#11), she says "...and I thought my career went downhill fast". And in Happily Ever After (#29), quote, (Batso is) "the type of evil minion who doesn't have the hang of the whole evil thing. Honestly, I can relate." She's always been giving us little tidbits.
@@illusoryVice Also, the beginning of the Grease 2 review.
Gotta love how they go back to praising Timmy like nothing happened even though heaping praise on him kinda started this whole mess.
6:15 "key on, key off"
You are not gonna believe this. The actor who voices Martin when he isn't crazy...is Fievel Mousketwitz!
Oy vey...
FYI, yes it's Phillip Glasser, but he plays Martin at the very end. At the beginning Martin is played by Phillip Van Dyke.
If the prophecy just spoke of "a" son of Jonathan Brisby and didn't name a specific one, why didn't Thorn Valley just take both of them in to train? You could still have Timmy rise as the hero from that if you really wanted to, and at least it makes more sense then just randomly picking him from the start without any specification...
IKR?? That would’ve been an awesome way to show the sibling rivalry and why Martin became resentful and jealous of Timmy. The rats don’t know which son is the chosen one, so both are invited to study and train under Justin’s guidance. Timmy is younger and more athletic, so he’s able to do better in the physical aspect, while Martin focuses on his studies and things like chess, knowing brute strength isn’t everything. Maybe Timmy starts to surpass him in academics as well, making Martin insecure about his capabilities and Timmy gets all the attention while Martin’s accomplishments always get ignored or constantly overshadowed by Timmy. This causes Martin to resent his brother despite Timmy tries apologizing and saying he didn’t mean to outshine him or even wanted to be popular or the hero. Martin gets even more mad, thinking Timmy is just pitying him and maybe finds another rat who doesn’t like all the attention and glory Timmy is getting. They work together on a project to make both look better and capable than Timmy, not knowing they’re losing their sanity by how they’ve let their jealousy consume them. And that’s kinda what I had for now lol
Ironically the original book of the Secret of NIMH does have a sequel, but it's different from this garbage
Ooh, I need to look for that one.
I'm hoping that, because of how different the death is for Jenner and his cohorts in the book vs. the movie, that the book sequel has the NIMH scientists assume that any of the other escaped rats would have died before Jenner or at around the same time, due to the more typical causes of accidental rat death. Because a world in which the NIMH scientists are no longer looking for the rats makes the forest colony at least plausible. A place that humans won't find unless they're looking for it is totally acceptable if humans AREN'T looking for it, after all.
@@lauraschantz9058 It's called Racso and The Rats of NIMH.
Racso is in fact Jenner's wayward son who has left his city colony, after his followers died. The plot revolves around Timmy (or Timothy) and Racso going to Thorn Valley to get better education, while humans are planning to flood the Valley with a dam.
IMO It would be a bit hard to adapt in animated feature form because of some changes, but it wouldn't be totally impossible.
6:44 Wasn't the goal of the rats in the first movie to live as a stand alone colony, AWAY from the affairs of man?
About Justin aging well, in the first movie they explained how the injections that had changed the rats' and the mice's DNA had also slowed their aging process. It's one of the reasons why Jonathan Brisby didn't tell Mrs. Brisby about NIMH: she would have grown old while he remained young.
Anyway, great review as always. This movie is a spit in the face of Mrs. Brisby, goddamnit.
Never knew of this abomination before now. To quote the records keeper in Star Wars, "If it's not in our records, it doesn't exist". That's how I choose to think of this. It doesn't exist.
Well, to be fair, I’m pretty sure John Carradine (the Great Owl’s original voice) was long dead by this point, so they could hardly use the Great Owl without replacing the actor...
But that just raises the question of why this movie was made to begin with, so...
One could easily ask the same for most of the "Don Bluth" sequels.
But they replaced the voice actors for almost all the other characters - so why would this be such a problem?
Tell that to Xiaolin Chronicles
@@michaeliv284 At least they had Tara Strong and Jennifer Hale in again.
Ms Brisby should have gotten some recognition.
"Seek out the great owl if you ever need help."
You mean that owl that terrified her near to death, slept on a pile of the bones of mice he'd eaten, and was clearly annoyed with her for just showing up? Yeah, go to that person for any flimsy old reason you might have.
Also, they clearly did not put any effort to finding a voice for Brisby that sounded even close to the original
Also, The Nostalgia Critic lifted out one massive problem in this movie: Everybody treats Timmy like he is the Mouses (Mouse Moses), even though he’s done squat. It would create massive pressure to any other child.
Would have made more sense for Martin to force himself to rise above his lack of being chosen and take out the laboratory, turning the test subjects into a militia to secretly defend Thorn Valley from the outside. Meanwhile Timmy cracks under all the chosen one pressure and, upon finding his brother alive and well and having done his job, flips out and hijacks the militia to try and take the respect he so craves by force. "I was the chosen one. Chosen to rule all of you!" And Martin ends up being the hero and having to stop Timmy.
I just noticed divas pitch fork is a tuning fork
11:00 A Narnia reference from a demon?! Bless my heart. In all seriousness I find this a sign of hi class, kudos to you ma'am.
This is gonna be good~
LuigiFan00001 Unlike the movie!
LuigiFan00001 that’s what I was gonna say 😂
I’d agree with you
said no one ever about this movie.
I wonder if it would have been better if it just wasn't a NIMH story.
Random note, Diva - my mom heard your outro music once as I was finishing an episode and really liked it.
m3rrys0ngstr3ss Maybe, as a kid I remember seeing this on Disney Channel, and thinking it was good. A few years back, I finally saw the original, and loved it. It made me realize the sequel was inferior.
As this review suggests, on paper, it sounded like a good idea, but the execution and direction was poorly handled. It might be fun for kids, but unfortunately, it doesn’t hold up like the original.
According to Don Bluth himself, he stated that if he had made this sequel, he would've made Timmy the villain and Martin the hero.
Hopefully with a similar story arc fir each, flipping the plot twist on its head
A vice-versa version.
Not sure that would’ve helped anything.
That wouldn't make any sense lol 🤔🤣
The Lorax is next? Finally! I've waited a long time for this.
Anna Linde Oh boy, I have too. Can't. Wait.
+AnnaLinde Yeah it's nice to see her go back to doing a bad musical adaptation.
This could've been better if they had cut out the prophecy all together, instead offering ALL of the Brisby children an education because its what Jonathan wanted for them. The film could've focused on each kid growing into their own person and bringing that knowledge they've accrued back home, finding ways to better life for those outside of Thorn Valley. Cause as we've seen with life near the farmhouse, it can be living hell for such small creatures. It could've had a message about trying to pave the way for future generations, in a world that's scary and cruel.
Let it Grow but every ''grow'' is replaced with Musical Hell's case on The Lorax
+Mochitachi Better. Let it grow but every grow is replaced with Dabhdude's SML "criticism" music video called How Bad Can SML be.
I see your Narnia reference. I see you.
I thought I was one of the only ones who read that horrible last book in the series!!
+JamesO'Sullivan That reminds me. I heard the film adaptations of that series are being rebooted with The Silver Chair. Which as it turns out is the PENULTIMATE BOOK in that series.
Why does Timothy look like Anabelle from Once Upon a Forest?
I believe you mean Abigail, and there's no telling.
I really hated how sequels shifting the focus from the previous film's protagonist to a side character who ends up being annoying, unlikable, and a major cut-down from the predecessor's main character.
Jonathan Brisby and Son. Because you're important enough for a statue, but not important enough to be listed by name.
At least he GETS a statue, unlike his poor mom
OOF 😮@@elsie8757 That's stings lol 🤣
Why doesn't Mrs. Brisby have a statue?!
Imagine how much better it would have been if Don Bluth got to adapt Racso and The Rats Of NIMH, the ACTUAL sequel to the original novel. Timothy goes to Thorn Valley to learn from the rats, but this time, he meets up with Jenner's wayward son, Racso, who isn't actually bad himself, just a bit spoiled and arrogant. Yeah, Jenner in the book wasn't a villain, just a disgruntled secessionist, and Nicodemus is still alive. But still, imagine the implications. Two boys who just became friends, one the son of the heroine, the other the son of the villain, being the subjects of constant comparisons.
I'd defininity watched that
Ohhh the Lorax is next! I cannot wait for Diva to rip into that one. I freaking hate the hipster Onceler bullshit they put in there, like wtf.
Hipster Onceler was truly a dark time for the internet.
ChocoDoeEyes, I thought of a documentary-esque title for that - Internet Dark Ages: Hipster Onceler Edition
I hated how almost the entire movie was a slap in the face to Dr. Suess's masterpiece. The animated special was much better.
Didn't Dangeresque frame the Lorax for murder?
Me too! I really hope she talks about the cut song "Biggering ", too!
All I can say is, thank GOD I saw thr original first as a kid instead of this royal crapfest.
Good choice!
Fun fact I saw this on Disney Channel YEARS ago (I think it was either2003 or 2004 because I remember commercials for the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mamsion and Kingdom Hearts II I think) once and had no idea what was going on (in fairness it was at a family Christmas party so I was all over the place) because I think it aired alongside Rescuers Down Under so the plots kind of merged in my head as I only saw bits and pieces of each
WATCH YOUR MOUTH LOL 🤣
The original NIMH had a great voice cast: John Carradine as the Owl, Derek Jacobi as Nicodemus, Elizabeth Hartmann as Mrs. Brisby (best remembered as Sidney Poitier's love interest in A Patch of Blue), Peter Strauss, Paul Shenar and Arthur Malet. Neither cast nor book rise to the level of the original. I'm just surprised you didn't see "Timmy misfires his slingshot" as the double entendre it should have been...
I agree with everything about this review EXCEPT for Just Say Yes. it's an entire song where Eric Idle just hams it up. Take it out of the movie and it's kind of amazing. Although I am speaking as someone who never watched this movie, just heard the song when it got jokingly associated with other, better villains, so I might be biased here.
The only reason I don't own the first NIMH on DVD is it's only available in a two pack with this sequel and I don't want to buy a movie I'll never watch just to own its predecessor.
Gage Peruti Just burn the other disc. It’ll make you feel better.
Actually you can get the original film solo. I know this because I have a copy in my collection. It's not hard to find on Amazon.
The One Man Box Office But is it available in stores? That's where I generally buy movies.
Tate Hildyard There's just one problem with that: I don't want to just throw away half of my money.
I can't believe they turned an animated film with it's complex themes into a cheap animated film with a chosen one story and the protagonist’s brother turning into the villain of the movie.
By the way, Timmy is voiced by Danial-San himself; Ralph Macchio
Hopefully he leaves this off his resume.
No....this move was worse than bad. This movie was insultingly, painfully, heinously vile. I hate it. The Secret of Nimh was Don Bluth's masterpiece. Everything about it was extraordinary....especially Mrs. Frisby. In this film, the true hero (Mrs. Frisby) is barely recognized despite her noble and heroic deeds in the first film. In the Secret of Nimh we establish that the father was a hero to the rats and mice who escaped Nimh because he saved them and we see quite clearly that Mrs. Frisby is a hero in her own right. She bravely volunteered to help them drug the cat, she helped Justin and Mr. Ages save the rats....she saved her children from the farmer.....there is NOTHING in the first movie that shows young Timmy has any special significance. He is sick through most of it and then he only gets one line. And there is NOTHING in this movie that acknowledges Mrs. Frisby as a hero. In this movie, Martin is mean to his brother for no reason other than being jealous that Timmy was chosen over him and then Timmy is taken to Thorn Valley and immediately hailed as a glorified hero but he has done NOTHING to prove himself one (other than have a heroic father). He keeps making foolish mistakes like abandoning his post, disobeying Jonathan, putting the girl in danger....and he doesn't suffer any consequences for his actions. He doesn't LEARN anything. The only half-baked "heroic" moment he did was save his brother who was shoehorned in as the movie's villain and would have made a much more interesting protagonist.....because we actually KNOW something about him from the first movie. And where IS Mrs. Frisby's statue? If anyone deserved a place of honor in Thorn Valley it was her. She literally saved them all.
Yeah, and she was just an ordinary field mouse; no genetic-enhancements to make her special...just an simple little field mouse on a journey to protect her family.
IAmTheUnison @ IAmTheUnison The reasons why she is arguably one of my top favorite female/mother characters in fiction. 😀👧🏿👍🏿
+Chartina Harmon Same Here! ^^
@IAmTheUnison Yay! :)
I thought her name was Mrs Brisby?
Geesh, when did the movie suddenly turn into Pinky & The Brain? All I hear is this when they're on screen-->
Timmy: Gee Martin, what do you wanna do tonight?
Martin: The same thing we do every night, Timmy. Try to take over the world.
Off Key Chorus --> They’re Timmy and the Brain. Yes, Timmy and the Brain. One is a genius and also insane. To take over the world, they’ll butt-rape this sequel. They’re wimpy, they’re Timmy and the Brain Brain Brain Brain…
Martin: YES!!!
*end song*
Nostalgia Critic!
You can make a movie about a chosen one who's been told he's destined for greatness since childhood, paraded around even before he did anything and as a result, feels like he's not treated the way he deserves when he's not given daring quests and treated like a child as a teen. I mean shit, how cool it'd be if TIMMY was the one who turned to the dark side duo to his arrogance and inferiority-superiority complex? There could be a prophecy twist (like, he's destined to stop NIMH for good, expect he immedietly takes over and plans to take Thorn Valley instead. After all, he's the chosen one and he can do no wrong, right? Thorn Valley will never disrespect him again once he shows them he's no longer a child...) Jenny is already a better hero than he is, so it could tirn into a "the unchosen one saves the day" plot.
"You'll make someone a very nice doormat someday" is the single most redeemable line in this entire movie.
And to give evil Martin some credit: he is voiced by Eric Idle
11:00 This is the last place I would ever expect to see a Narnia reference! xD
So...Secret of NIMH 2 is about a mouse trying to stop his brother who wouldn't be evil if it hadn't been for that slapped on prophecy. In other words, if they didn't build Timmy up like that, none of this would've happened! Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
This movie has the exact opposite problem of Chicken Little. In CL, the characters belittle the main character, and treat him like dogshit every waking moment, while in this, the characters treat Timmy like a god, even though he hasn't done anything.
Also, shouldn't be movie be in "Musical Sequel Hell," the hell you established in you Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas review?
Unquestionably.
You know, a better idea might have been to introduce Jenny earlier on or have her act as the main protagonist. As the main protagonist, maybe we could have seen how she grew up in the labratory basement and watched her parents suffer, giving her incentive to escape and find help. Somehow, she could learn about the legendary Chosen One, and learn something that makes her believe that he can help her.
This would lead her to seek out Timmy, and she could find out that he was actually clueless and selfish, and seemingly unable to help her. Timmy's arc in the story could be bettering himself, and actually learning when to shut up and follow orders (a virtue that clashes greatly with his biggest vice, which is his resentment of acting as a second string. It could also be represented as him being too prideful about his status as "The Chosen One" to ever listen to anyone else.) Then they could have formed a real romantic connection if Jenny played a part in helping Tim become a better person.
Honestly, there should just be a "twist" where we find out that Timmy isn't the chosen one, Jenny is.
Also, I think we can all agree that Martin's disappearance needed to have more of an impact on the plot and on Timmy, rather than just being mentioned during a conversation with Jenny. The disappearance (and probable death!) of his brother should have a much greater effect on Timmy than it had in the movie. He should have a moment all to himself where he meets his brother again and is horrified by what he's become.
Martin should be played far darker than he is. First off, he absolutely needs an outfit change-- I'd personally suggest something more mad-scientist-y than his present wizard garb. There should also be a more clear distinction between what experiments were Valentine's and what experiments were Martin's, to cement the idea that he is a bad person who does bad things.
And if the movie wants us to truly feel sorry for him, then there should be an aspect of genuine instability to his character, something that shows us that his mind has been broken from those years of abuse. He'd be a much more compelling and sympathetic villain if we saw that, on the inside, he's not evil-- he's just a scared and confused kid who's lashing out at a world that failed to protect him.
Or they could have flipped the script entirely. Here is my idea....
Movie goes basically the same ui until the reach the lab. Timmy meets Martin, we see the militia, scientists are dogs. But, Martin is a good guy. He rose above the torture and chose to be the guy on the outside protecting those inside, forming the militia to protect Thorn Valley from humans and other major threats. It is how they hadn't been discovered yet.
This is exciting for Martin cause "Hey lil bro. I'm alive and I can help you be the chosen one!" Cause he came to terms over the years. But, seeing all that Martin has done and basically doing Timmy's job, Timmy snaps Nd hijacks the Militia to take the respect he feels he was owed by force. Then Ages and Martin meet and team up to stop the now racing mad timmy, broken by years of pressure, and it turns out Martin was the chosen one after all cause he worked past his issues.
When I was in elementary school I took choir. One of the songs we practiced singing was “Somewhere Out There”. Our teacher informally called it “The Sad Mouse Song”.
Just what we need, Secret of Nimh 2. 😒
Not to mention the fact that Mrs brisby in this crappy sequel was voice by the same actress who voice tsunade from Naruto
For the longest time they threatened a PREQUEL, of all things: The Secret of NIMH 3: The Beginning (so original, wow) was supposed to cover everything already covered in Nicodemus' flashback sequence, ending right before the raid on the house that got Jonathan Brisby killed.
Now there's talk of a live-action remake...but like the Australian live-action version of The Last Unicorn (which was reportedly going to have a CGI Red Bull face off against a mare with a horn glued to her forehead, can't you just feel the magic), hopefully it'll expire in Development Hell.
I dunno. Maybe it is best not to remake something as cherished as Secret of NIMH, but sometimes, I believe that if a classic deserves better tribute than a crappy sequel, maybe the remake is a better way of doing it justice. Charlotte's Web was an animated classic that got a crappy direct-to-DVD sequel in 2003, but then did get a decent live-action remake a couple years later.
But yes, other times it's better to leave a classic alone.
You know I was gonna study for my test tommrow but screw it. Secret of NIMH 2 musical hell!
Next time The Secret of NIMH: The Karate Mouse.
The fourth movie will be The Secret of NIMH 4: Jenner Relives
The Cinematic Mind Key on, key off.
EYTPS The Fifth film would be The Secret of NIMH: Electric Boogaloo.
The Cinematic Mind The Secret of NIMH Holiday Special
The Secret of NIMH 7: A Rat and Mouse Story (It'd be a BrisbyxJustin love story)
A NIMH Tale: A NIMH and an American Tail Crossover
Okay, I haven’t seen the original in several years, so correct me if I’m wrong... but wasn’t _Mrs_ Brisby the hero of the story? Why is everyone talking about it like it was Jonathan? I know he did something in the backstory before the first movie’s events, but... does Mrs Brisby (forget her first name) not get any credit _at all?_
Don Bluth has made some booty tier movies, but you know it's bad when he didn't approve this sequel. There's one thing that I noticed: why didn't Mrs. Brisby get her own statue? She held a magical amulet and almost burned her paws to a crisp to save her family. Along with that she saved all of the rats from getting poisoned to death. She definitely deserves her own statue. It's unfair that Mrs. Brisby didn't get a statue while Timothy got one for doing a lot less (it also doesn't help that he made bad decisions throughout the entire movie).
And it doesn't help that almost all problems Timmy helps solve only came to be due to Timmy being hailed as a hero, and growing arrogant from all worship, in the first place.
Eva Woolridge @ Eva Woolridge Gotta love some good ol' fashioned sexism in kid's films! 😑
Timmy did NOTHING. He was asleep through most of the first film and gets ONE line, where he's whining at his mom for having to stay in bed. Then the so-called "prophecy" in this film states that "a SON of Jonathan Frisby would be chosen to save the rats when Nimh reared its ugly head again" (this could have EASILY been Martin BTW. The prophecy didn't specify WHICH son and Martin was a much more interesting character. Also, I think it was LUDICROUS that they made Martin the villain and they barely gloss over the fact that he went missing. Like "oh BTW, Mom says my brother is missing and I didn't even bother to go home and help her look for him because I am so busy being a "hero") So Timmy goes to Thorn Valley and is IMMEDIATELY hailed as this glorious hero.....but he does NOTHING to earn this title. He abandons his post, putting his comrades in danger. He disobeys Jonathan and Mr. Ages....repeatedly....he puts the girl mouse in danger and almost gets her killed by Martin. The only half-baked heroic thing he does is go back into the burning building to save Martin from a fire that HE started. And he gets a statue. Where IS Mrs. Frisby's statue? Why isn't she in Thorn Valley being hailed as a hero?
I know right lol🤣It's really sad to say the least😭@@CeltycSparrow
This movie sucks, but in defense of pre adolescent Timmy, he sings the best of the three and is only in the movie for like a minute. I also have an idea for an improvement: Timmy doubts himself the whole time he is in Thorn valley, and Martin going missing drives him to try and live up to everything his brother represented. For Martin, I think him becoming evil could work. I would have Martin searching for the original NIMH serum to save an elderly and dying Mrs Brisby, and getting caught. Once caught, he is given a different serum and it scrambles his brain, but since Martin had some of the original serum in him and his mind was more advanced, it would take a traumatic event to take effect. He manages to escape and return home to find his mother had died in his absence and the shock scrambles his brain and makes him stronger. In his anger and grief he returns to NIMH and persuades the mice who were still there to rebel, and they manage to poison the scientists and kill them. Unknown to the other mice, Martin began to slip the remaining serum that was used on him to brainwash the stronger mice. Jenny realizes right before Martin takes over due to her parents haveing the original serum. Martin takes over with the brainwashed mice and tries to learn to bring back the dead to save his mom, the serum twisting his mind into thinking he could do it. Meanwhile in Thorn Valley slowly mice start to disappear, and Jenny comes, begging for help. Timmy bonds with her over her lost family as he lost his mother, but due to the danger and lack of weapons, the rats of Thorn Vally refuse to help. Timmy runs off to help Jenny and they bond during the journey to NIMH and when they finally arrive they find that Martin has enslaved half the mice and has nearly killed the other half in his experiments. Seeing his brother who was put before him sends Martin into a crazed frenzy and tries to kill Timmy. Timmy and Jenny barely escape and find Timmy’s two sisters who had been working on a cure. They saw that something changed after their motehr’s death, and had followed Martin to NIMH and saw what he did. They had worked on a cure for years and finally made it. They had found a way to counterattack the serum that Martin gave to everyone and was forced into him. They slip the antidote into the moves food, and everyone save for Martin is rescued. Seeing his plans crumble Martin breaks down into a sobbing and laughing mess. Timmy gives him the antidote and they take him to Thorn Valley. After a while his mind returns to a better state, but he can’t remember anything past his mother’s death. It is agreed that no one can tell him what happened, as in his fragile mindset he would go insane with guilt. The movie ends with a new statue of the entire Brisby family being erected in honor of everything they did and went through.
...Yeah, there's an interesting germ of an idea here, and you're absolutely right in what it is, but... The sequel to The Secret of NIMH, a film with a really interesting and unlikely hero being a generic ass Boy Of Destiny? Seriously? Actually, there's a second interesting germ of an idea here (though seemingly accidnetal) - Boy Of Destiny's predestination of heroicness creates the problem he winds up solving due to his sense of entitlement to a more interesting role in the team than being on watch from being the Boy Of Destiny? And him being the Boy Of Destiny helped create the villain his party was facing due to a jealous sibling? Play that stuff up and you've got something approaching Greek Tragedy levels of irony, and that's an interesting story. Whereas here it all seems like it's like that due to bad writing.
On the plus side, while a shadow of the animation of the original, that looked surprisingly well animated for something that's direct to video...
LOL that usage of that An American Tale song fitted so in. Also good luck with The Lorax, oh boy!
Does Eric Idle never turn down a gig as well? He was in the film of Ella Enchanted, and that's also quite horrible.
Ariella Kahan-Harth And Quest for Camelot
Mrs. Brisby is a character who lives constantly in the shadow of her dead hero spouse and does what she does not for fame and accolades, but because it just needs to be done to save her family. Hers is a story of quiet heroism, not statues in the town square. Timmy is just a half-step away from being a Mary Sue. Everybody expects greatness from him, but for no real reason and to no real purpose. There’s no actual conflict or stakes evident in this story.
Timmy is a more compelling character when he's sick in bed.
I was gonna sleep but dammit one of my favorite youtubers reviews the bad sequel to one of my favorite movies and I've got to see it now!
"It's like staging Watership Down with Muppet bunnies" I'M GETTING A COPYRIGHT DEAL!
Also, the movie did explain that Martin had been brainwashed, which is why he was behaving that way (hence the bandage).
Although you cannot just undo brainwashing, so that makes it even worse
These episodes help me get through the Nostalgia Critic controversy
Agreed!
The Rats of NIMH series had plenty of stories to choose from for a sequel that would have been more engaging than this stupidity!
Have you ever considered doing the Star Wars Holiday Special? It IS actually a musical, though this is often forgotten. Would make a good, errm, holiday special.
Aaron Mercer I doubt she would, since it’s been reviewed to death, and there’s nothing new Diva could bring to the film.
When was NIMH evil? The rats were never at all unhappy about having been former subjects of intelligence-enhancement experiments. I don't know if it was in the film, but in the book it says that the Rats of NIMH took their name from the sign outside of the laboratory they escaped from: The National Institute of Mental Health.
Actually no
The first film made it clear NIMH was a torturous place that the Rats remember as an hive of cruelty
@@koshavinka2995 The book was rather different then.
3:13 Because the screenwriters were just too idiotic.
I have a headcanon that this entire sequel was just a fever dream that Timmy had while fighting pneumonia in the first movie.
What in the world was in the medicine that they gave him
At least The Great Owl wasn’t disgraced by this schlock!
OH Mistress we LOVE your Musical Hell reviews keep up the great work!
I love The Secret of Nimh and this just looks plain terrible. Did Timmy actually do anything to live up to the prophecy of being the chosen one? Harry Potter defeats the darkest wizard of his time and Anakin Skywalker kills an evil tyrant that was putting a stranglehold on the entire galaxy, I know he helped bring about the evil, but he still stopped it. It looks all Timmy really did was set a building on fire and save his evil brother. Also the off screen redemption of Martin seems stupid. It actually would have been a lot more interesting if Timmy actually made Martin see the error of his ways and Martin saves the day making him the son of Jonathan that the prophecy was really talking about and they picked Timmy by mistake. Besides it is kind of messed up that they just took Timmy to Thorn Valley and left his mother and his siblings there when it is because of Timmy’s mom that they even had a Thorn Valley in the first place. They go on about how much of a hero Jonathan is and ignore the fact that his wife was as much of a hero as he was, if I didn’t know any better I would say that there is some sexism going on in Thorn Valley.
Okay, you've taken on plenty of 2nd tier entries that are almost guaranteed disasters. Time to tear into big studio era bombs like 1954 's "Brigadoon", 1955's "Guys & Dolls , 1956's "Carousel", or 1962's "Flower Drum Song".
Evil!Martin, you'll never be Professor Ratigan. Don't even try XD
Sick burn, brah. :D
Backstory? BACKSTORY
I LOVED The Secret of NIMH, and thought I was going to have a damn stroke when I first watched the sequel. Some things can be overlooked (For example, why is the rest of the Brisby family left behind at the Fitzgibbons' farm--especially when NIMH continues to turn the place inside out--only to turn up in Thorn Valley at the end anyway? IIRC they even shipped Auntie Shrew over), some decisions are arguably good (I actually enjoyed bits of Eric Idle's creepy song) but 90% of it is pure obscenity.
Oddly, it's CLOTHING that made me give up on any hope of liking the mess early on. In the original, aside from humans only the rats, the Brisbys and Auntie Shrew wear anything (presumably Shrew picked the habit up from Mrs. B); in the sequel, even bloody insects wear suits and shoes. (I won't ask what those shoes are made of, or where they're sold.) Timmy and Ages share a moment about wearing underpants, which is clearly something neither of them do.
Snot moment not in the review: the climactic shot of the cage flying upwards, then beginning to fall back down into the flames is a cheap imitation of Bruce Willis' ejector-seat stunt in Die Hard 2.
Snot moment #2: That big rat always accompanying Justin? Brutus. Yeah, THAT Brutus.