#thumeblina

Today is the 25th anniversary of a flawed, but nostalgic movie by Don Bluth, who made many movies that competed with Disney during their Dark and Renaissance years. As a former animator at Disney, he wanted to bring back the magic that he thought was lose during their time after Walt’s Death. So he backed up his bags and went elsewhere to make his own films. 

In the 80′s, he was beating out Disney with hit by hit, until 1989 when the Little Mermaid came into theaters and won over All Dogs Go To Heaven. 

After the 80′s, his luck when it came to movies proved to be a mixed bag. His movies during this decade proved to be a hit and miss with critics and watchers. His usual trademarks of dark stories were toned down due to executive meddling. Rock A Doodle, based on Chanticleer, was his first big flop, which was followed by other failures, which includes Thumbelina.

Thumbelina like many of Bluth’s 90′s movies had tons of production problems, including the fact that he was forced to write the script after the previous one quit. Which is one of the reasons why the story feels disjointed and all over the place If it had a better writer, then it could have been more passable. 

On the other hand, there is a certain charm that has people still love this movie, despite it’s many problems. I mean when you have Charo as a big busty toad, then you can’t help but sing along.

 Or Iago (Gilbert Gottfried ) trying to sing to Ariel ( Jodi Benson) .

And even though it’s seen as a knock off of “A Whole New World”, any child of the 90′s will have this song in their hearts and in an AMV on youtube. We know it’s cheesy and cliche, but despite all of it we drink it in. For many of us, this is Thumbelina. It’s one reason why I have mixed feelings about Disney doing a version of the tale, since it could take away from something that was on Bluth’s resume.