Don Bluth

  • An American Tail (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2021) It takes a certain audacity to recast the American immigrant experience mythology in the mould of an animated kid’s film. On another level, it does make some sense — Co-conceived by Steven Spielberg and animation upstart Don Bluth (who was explicitly taking on Disney), you can see the strong narrative threads aimed at the younger set — chiefly being separated from one’s family in a strange land. But then again you have pro-American criticism of Soviet occupation and antisemitism, many Jewish cultural references, call-backs to the massive immigration of European refugees and plenty of other things that are best appreciated by an adult audience. The result is simultaneously dark and cute, with mice fighting against cats, raising a golem robot along the way. Also songs, even though “There are no cats in America” sounds a lot like West Side Story’s “America.” There are also strong parallels with the Maus graphic novel for the literate set, although the metaphor is not quite so fully realized in the film. Still, the result isn’t too bad — while the proliferation of low-budget sequels (none of them involving Spielberg or Bluth) has retrospectively tarnished the series’ original, An American Tail does hold up rather nicely today, although it’s recommended to older audiences than usual for that kind of film.

  • The Land Before Time (1988)

    The Land Before Time (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) I find myself curiously laconic in describing The Land Before Time. What you need to know is that it’s an animated film from Don Bluth, which was trying at the time to compete with Walt Disney as a purveyor of animated family films. It’s set in prehistoric times, with a young dinosaur trying to find a place to live after the death of his mom (oops, there’s the Disney touch right there) and making friends along the way. Despite the film’s claim to fame as having spawned no less than thirteen direct-to-video follow-ups to date, it’s also as bland as it’s possible to be. Aimed at kids and not badly made in any sense of the word, it’s a by-the-number exercise in family movies. Dinosaur fans will appreciate, even though the film inevitably doesn’t reflect the dramatic accumulation of knowledge in the field in the past 30 years. The film is almost exactly what you think it will be from looking at a plot summary or the box cover: a kid’s friend dinosaur adventure. Nothing more, nothing less.

  • The Secret of NIMH (1982)

    The Secret of NIMH (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2017) There was a time during which renegade-Disney-animator/director Don Bluth represented perhaps the only credible alternative to Disney when it came to animated movies. The Secret of NIMH was the first such challenge, and even today it’s easy to see that it had things to offer that couldn’t be found in Disney movies: a darker, harsher, more epic-fantasy-like story that similar offerings such as Disney’s The Rescuers. The quality of the animation is average at best, but there is some ambition in presenting a story of this scope in animated format. This being said, I’m not as taken by The Secret of NIMH as I expected to be. The darker tone proves a hindrance at times, and the scattered subplots don’t help either, oscillating between light comic relief and far more serious dark fantasy involving uplifted rats, deadly succession game, magic and a widow trying to escape death. Whew. Then there’s the shaky logic of the premise, in which the “talking sentient animals” is justified by way of a scientific experiment, raising far many more questions about the presence of other talking sentient animals (such as the birds) that weren’t in the lab. As such, The Secret of NIMH feels dull, dark and unpleasant. Not quite what I was expecting.