The defence The Sentimental Softie
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
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The Secret of NIMH
Adventure · Animation · Family · 1982
A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.
Movie details
The Secret of NIMH
“Right before your eyes, and beyond your wildest dreams.”
1982 Adventure · Animation · Family 1h 23m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
7.5 / 10
49.5K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
93 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
76 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
7.4 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over The Secret of NIMH?
For the defence
The Sentimental Softie
“You came to feel something, and you will.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Don Bluth
Written by
Don Bluth · Will Finn · Gary Goldman · John Pomeroy
Elizabeth Hartman
Mrs. Brisby (voice)
Derek Jacobi
Nicodemus (voice)
Arthur Malet
Mr. Ages (voice)
Dom DeLuise
Jeremy (voice)
Hermione Baddeley
Auntie Shrew (voice)
Shannen Doherty
Teresa (voice)
Wil Wheaton
Martin (voice)
Court is in session
Put The Secret of NIMH on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.