This film has more soul than most animated films. The film music is excellent, and honestly is the shining jewel of the movie. The art work is excellent for the time period: and no computers used! The backgrounds have excellent detail: they could honestly be used as great works of art on their own merit. The voices are excellent and very fitting for the characters. The story line is very well done: while not lacking in action at any time, it's also not like most modern films that are constantly "in your face" with fast-moving activity. The facial expressions are outstanding! Too bad Don Bluth didn't do more films! The mud in certain scenes was very well done. The story has great struggle and good-versus-evil appeal to it. The music is actually great for an animated film: no catchy or cheeky pop music at all, but the music score seems to always be doing something. Many times it does such a good job at painting the mental picture of certain scenes that if you were to listen to the score by itself after seeing the movie, you could trace the story line by heart. Even the musical prototype for the main theme, "Flying Dreams" (or whatever) was done so well that it makes one wonder who wrote and performed the original demo (first song of the credits). Excellent movie in all aspects, even if it seems "old school" to some :)
Review of The Secret of NIMH
