Don Bluth Ranked

As an animation enthusiast who grew up in the 80s and 90s, I have a huge affection for the work of Don Bluth. His influential style and penchant for a disconcerting blend of narrative light and darkness have made his films articles of great fascination to a certain generation who grew up with them as the major alternative to Disney, before Pixar came along or Ghibli was widely introduced to the western world. But being a Bluth fan is also a frustrating experience because his talent and ambition as an artist and director far exceed his abilities to tell a coherent story or create truly iconic characters. There are exceptions but for the most part this trawl through the Bluth oeuvre confirmed my fears that, while his semi-legendary status is justified, these justifications often come in small bursts rather than across the length of an entire film. Here is my ranking of all eleven Bluth features.

11.THUMBELINA

Don Bluth’s reputation as a great animator has always been balanced by his reputation as a bad storyteller. Even his very best films suffer from some degree of narrative clutter, while his worst can veer into being borderline incomprehensible. Initially, Thumbelina might seem like the most egregious example of Bluth’s penchant for bizarre tangents and inappropriate content, with its tale of a tiny girl fending off the amorous intentions of a series of woodland creatures. Certainly, I originally attributed this strange and uncomfortable narrative to that most unwelcome of opening credits: Screenplay by Don Bluth. However, I was surprised to discover that Bluth’s Thumbelina is actually extremely faithful to the original story by Hans Christian Andersen. Whether Andersen’s telling is any more appealing I cannot say but it does feature toads, bugs and moles with romantic designs on the heroine. Having been through another round of bankruptcy and another change of production company, Bluth was understandably looking to create something with more box office potential this time round. A classic fairy tale narrative must’ve seemed like a fairly safe bet and Bluth chose one by Andersen, the writer of the recent Disney hit The Little Mermaid. In an even more blatant attempt to ride the Disney coattails, Bluth also cast the voice of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel, Jodi Benson, as his Thumbelina. The stage seemed set for a safe but potentially profitable endeavour but no-one seems to have stopped and thought about just how discomfortingly weird this story is. When they eliminated the tragic ending of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Disney showed an understanding of the importance of adaptation. By trying to play safe and stick closely to Andersen’s original story, Bluth found himself with an ugly and bewildering turkey (one of the few creatures that doesn’t try to put the moves on our teenage heroine!).

It’s not just the strange story that makes Thumbelina so bad. In trying to make something closer to a Disney classic, Bluth seems to have erased his own sensibilities almost entirely. Thumbelina doesn’t look or sound like a Don Bluth film. The character designs are unappealing at best and hideous at worst. The beauty of The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail has been traded for a gaudy brightness and an overuse of effects like rotoscoping and embryonic CG which probably felt exciting at the time but date the film badly. Thumbelina also leans heavily on music, with Bluth hiring Barry Manilow and William Ross to write the seemingly endless stream of songs. The soundtrack has a terrible reputation, with the infamous Marry the Mole winning a Razzie for Worst Original Song, but for the most part it’s more forgettable than dreadful. Follow Your Heart and Thumbelina are both decent enough songs (although the former is run into the ground across the runtime) and even Marry the Mole is aware of its own ridiculousness in a way that makes it vaguely endearing. It is the relentlessness of the musical interludes that kills these slight compositions. The already weak characterisations and minimal plot are given no time to develop before another musical number pipes up. Every character, no matter where they are on their emotional journey, throws themselves into the singing and dancing with gusto, making Thumbelina herself especially hard to pin down as a relatable lead.

Although Thumbelina’s attempts to emulate Disney often see Bluth come in for severe criticism, the financial straits in which he found himself at this stage make his actions completely understandable. I actually find Thumbelina a very depressing watch, not just because it is generally awful (though it is) but also because it feels like desperation itself, painstakingly animated and dying a horrible death in front of us. Thumbelina bombed at the box office and it was followed that same year by another Bluth project, A Troll in Central Park, which did even worse, making 1994 the apex year in Bluth’s well-documented 90s downfall. Meanwhile, The Lion King was setting new precedents for animated blockbuster success across the world. I can only imagine the levels of desperation Bluth was feeling must’ve been something close to those that almost cause Thumbelina to actually marry the mole!

10.BARTOK THE MAGNIFICENT

Sequels starring characters who played only a minor role in the original film can be a dicey business. Sometimes the promotion of a bit player works well, as in Puss in Boots or A Shot in the Dark. Then again, if it goes the other way you can end up with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back or, God help us, Kronk’s New Groove. The idea of making a film based entirely around Bartok, the albino-bat henchman of Rasputin from Don Bluth’s hit Anastasia, never seemed like a convincing idea to me but the fact that it would be a straight-to-video sequel kind of took the pressure off a bit. I mean, straight-to-video sequels are generally quite poor, aren’t they? Like The Return of Jafar or The Land Before Time Part Nine-Hundred-and-Eight. Or, God help us, Kronk’s New Groove.

In the event, Bartok the Magnificent was exactly what I expected it to be. In all honesty, I always found Bartok one of the weaker elements of Anastasia. Hank Azaria’s voice performance was the one thing that elevated this otherwise comparatively rote comic relief above his contemporaries, and even that becomes wearing over the course of an hour. Frequently part of the reason we love supporting characters is that they are used sparingly and Bartok the Magnificent is a quintessential example of why the “Hey, audiences loved this character, next time make him the whole show” line of thinking is disastrously reductive. With a very basic quest plot, a 68 minute runtime and a series of primitive attempts at introducing CGI, Bartok the Magnificent feels like a combination of a cash-grab and a testing ground, which may very well be what it was. 

The fact that I ranked it below every Bluth film of the 90s except the execrable Thumbelina is indicative of how little I found to enjoy here, and yet Bartok the Magnificent isn’t quite as depressing a viewing experience as its early 90s predecessors, simply because those films felt like they were trying and failing to be good. Bartok the Magnificent simply feels like Bluth and co-director Gary Goldman marking time between projects. If Bartok just about earned his place in animation history with his performance in Anastasia, he certainly does nothing here to earn the titular adjective applied to him.

9.ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN

Although the early work of Don Bluth was not without its flaws, there was a feeling of excitement about his opening trio of feature films. Bluth seemed to be building and honing a style while still creating distinct and interesting stories. The success of An American Tail and The Land Before Time saw his work being mentioned in the same breath as the new Disney releases and there was much anticipation about what Bluth might do next. Unfortunately, what he did next was All Dogs Go to Heaven, a very bad film made to look even worse when it was released on the same day as Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The inception of the Disney Renaissance coincided with a disastrous critical and commercial downturn for Sullivan Bluth Productions. Having cut ties with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, Bluth established a new relationship with British production company Goldcrest Films and set to work on All Dogs Go to Heaven, an idea that had been kicking around since production wrapped on The Secret of NIMH. Inspired by old Gangster and Fantasy films, All Dogs Go to Heaven takes a chunk of its central idea from A Guy Named Joe, the Spencer Tracy movie that was also the basis for Spielberg’s Always released the same year. In Bluth’s interpretation, the story is about an unscrupulous dog who is murdered by his sketchy canine business partner Carface but finds a way to return to Earth to wreak vengeance. However, he becomes caught up in something much bigger when he rescues a young girl whom Carface has kidnapped.

All Dogs Go to Heaven seems set to deliver a satisfying redemption story, if only it could focus long enough for any of the narrative to make sense. Story had never been Bluth’s strong suit and screenwriter David N. Weiss struggles to coalesce the unwieldy stack of ideas into something coherent. The Secret of NIMH had also suffered from a convoluted narrative but Bluth had established such a strong, consistent tone that he managed to make it work. Tonally, All Dogs Go to Heaven is all over the place. Sometimes it seems like Bluth’s most cartoonish proposition yet but it is also often his darkest work, with themes of murder and kidnapping and a protagonist who spends a large portion of the film as a reprehensible manipulator. Stir in a collection of the most forgettable and horribly performed songs imaginable and you’ve got yourself a big doggy-do stew. 

There are flashes of potential brilliance here and there in All Dogs Go to Heaven, such as a sequence in which the canine protagonist Charlie and the rescued orphan Anne-Marie attempt to settle down to sleep in an old car. Here we get some strong character comedy and a logical progression of events that manage to simultaneously create and satirise a typical moment of cutesy connection. This scene stands out because of its economy, focusing on two characters for an extended period. Elsewhere, All Dogs Go to Heaven just can’t sit still for a second. It flies past crucial plot points in its canine-like eagerness to get to the next unconventional surprise. It’s all very well to include fiery visions of Hell and giant musical alligators but there needs to be some kind of thread holding all this together. The Land Before Time had a tendency to overexplain itself through omniscient voiceover. Watch twenty minutes of All Dogs Go to Heaven and you’ll feel like placing an emergency call to that earlier film’s intrusive narrator.

It’s not just the art of storytelling that is missing from All Dogs Go to Heaven. Somehow Bluth’s once sumptuous style has descended into something that looks cheap and at times televisual. As with The Land Before Time, the powers that be demanded several cuts to make the film less scary for children, resulting in some very choppy scenes at key points in the story. Charlie’s murder, for instance, is implied in a way that just makes it look like he’s disappeared. The animation often seems off too. There are scenes in which the characters appear to be pasted onto the backgrounds rather than actually inhabiting their environments. The voice cast do a pretty decent job, with Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise requesting to record their lines at the same time to capitalise on their already established chemistry. Mention must also be made of Judith Barsi, the talented young actress whose voice graced both The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven but who never got to see them because she was killed in a murder-suicide committed by her abusive father before either film was released. It’s no fault of Bluth’s but this tragic detail underscores All Dogs Go to Heaven’s uncomfortably grim tone and makes it an even more difficult watch. I really wanted to like All Dogs Go to Heaven. I love its ambition and its attempts to combine more mature themes with a talking-dog fantasy. Ultimately though, I found it to be a confusing and frustrating watch that flounders more than the fishy sidekick of the little mermaid who so thoroughly upstaged it.

8. THE PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN

Of all the bad films Don Bluth made (and, much as I love his work, there are a lot of bad ones), The Pebble and the Penguin was the one that proved to be a tipping point. Bluth and his co-director Gary Goldman left the film during production and demanded that their names be removed after distributor MGM insisted on a raft of changes at a late stage. Another in a string of rushed productions, the pressure is really starting to show in The Pebble and the Penguin, with the frequently impressive animation repeatedly interrupted by prominent glitches and obvious corner-cutting. Characters freeze in position for seconds at a time or appear only partially drawn. Once you start noticing these errors, it becomes very hard to invest in this already peculiar film. Still, not every downside of The Pebble and the Penguin can be blamed on MGM. After all, the unappealing character designs are central to making the film a difficult watch. These are some butt-ugly penguins and their personalities are so underdeveloped that there is not an ounce of charm on which to fall back. Bluth later admitted there were story problems from the outset and the film was floundering even before MGM interfered. 

Given that it is the culmination of a downturn in quality that had begun as early as the late 80s, The Pebble and the Penguin could’ve been a lot worse. Though saddled once again with feeble songs by Barry Mainilow and a struggling voice cast who do what they can to no avail (Tim Curry deserves special mention for throwing himself hard into the attempt to salvage a memorable villain), it at least has a straightforward plot that makes it less perplexing than All Dogs Go to Heaven or Thumbelina. But being better than Bluth’s worst films is not a badge of honour many would wear with pride. Fortunately, when Bluth and Goldman left the project it was to accept an offer to help set up Fox Animation Studios, where they would make their next film and finally bring to a close this barren period of the Don Bluth story. A large scale hit was imminent, proving Bluth’s point about the importance of time and resources to the creative process. 

As the credits rolled on The Pebble and the Penguin, I felt a sense of relief to be emerging from this portion of Bluth’s filmography but also a sense of cumulative depression from having spent consecutive evenings watching a string of films fail so spectacularly. It takes so much time, effort and care to make an animated feature and Bluth left Disney because of his genuine passion for the medium, only to eventually find himself boxed in by the very corner-cutting measures and corporate interference he was trying to evade. Although it is not the worst of his films, as the last film chronologically of a woefully fallow period The Pebble and the Penguin unfortunately has every tear of frustration and defeat baked into its oddly-flavoured crust.

7.ROCK-A-DOODLE

The ancient legend of Chanticleer the rooster dates back to the Middle Ages and the notion of an animated adaptation was being talked about since the early days of Disney. It was Don Bluth who ultimately made the first full-length Chanticleer feature though, as late as 1991. So was it worth the wait? Ummmmm…

Although I’ve always found the popular All Dogs Go to Heaven at least as messy and confusing as Rock-a-Doodle, it is the latter film that has acquired the reputation of being the moment when Bluth’s output started to get really nuts. Ambitiously incorporating live action sequences and imagining Chanticleer as an Elvis Presley inspired rock star, Rock-a-Doodle undoubtedly lacks the focus of earlier Bluth films. Placing script-writing duties in the hands of All Dogs scribe David N. Weiss again might be partially responsible, although I hesitate to point that finger of blame given the batshit crazy material Weiss was repeatedly being tasked with untangling, only for Bluth’s impulsive flights of fancy to retangle it on its way to the screen. Rock-a-Doodle was identified as being confusing during test screenings, leading to a voiceover narration by Phil Harris’s Patou the dog being added at the last minute. In fairness, this works quite well in making the story comprehensible and the tonal issues that made All Dogs Go to Heaven so jarring are not present here. For all its strangeness, Rock-a-Doodle maintains a consistent comedic tone without sudden shifts into extreme pathos or overwhelming horror. Nevertheless, Bluth was once again asked to make cuts to render the film less scary. These included the removal of a scene in which the villainous owl The Grand Duke prepares a skunk-pie (the skunk escapes but the preceding peril was still deemed untenable) and the application of whimsical coloured effects to the Duke’s magically toxic breath which pretty much undermines an otherwise interesting concept. Images of alcohol were replaced with soft drinks, something that was never seen as a problem in the booze-soaked All Dogs, while the female pheasant character Goldie was redesigned to eliminate a prominent cleavage. The success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit had been a major influence on Rock-a-Doodle and so Goldie was originally conceived as a Jessica Rabbit type but this overt sexualisation that had been so effective in Roger Rabbit’s more adult Noir setting did seem a tad tasteless in Rock-a-Doodle’s more child-targeted world. Bluth’s films had often had a more mature edge but with its corny live action sequences and juvenile lead, Rock-a-Doodle establishes itself as primarily a kid’s film from the off, even if its rock ‘n’ roll nostalgia and odd lapses into horniness hardly seems appropriate for that demographic.

I actually found quite a lot to like in Rock-a-Doodle. Beneath the choppy execution there’s a coherent plot and Bluth’s delightful character designs and strong animation are still in evidence. The lighter tone makes for a welcome change in the sometimes gloomy Bluth canon and the character of the Grand Duke is a terrific creation, brilliantly voiced by Christopher Plummer and animated with a combination of comic verve and genuine menace. The skunk pie sequence was a regrettable loss but can fortunately be tracked down as a deleted scene. The rockabilly pastiche songs, though not really given the room they need to breathe, are an improvement on the mish-mash of terrible tunes that incongruously littered All Dogs Go to Heaven and they are delivered enjoyably by a well-cast Glen Campbell as Chanticleer. Animation fans will no doubt get a nostalgic rush from hearing the return of Disney stalwart Phil Harris as Patou and his elevation to the role of narrator provides the opportunity to revel in this final performance from a legend. However, having established a strong cast and a collection of promising characters, Bluth fails to have them interact in a convincing way. The result is a story in which everyone feels isolated from one another, engaged in their own specific shtick in a manner that doesn’t blend with or complement their scene partners. The live action is an unnecessary overreach and has the aesthetic of a breakfast cereal commercial. It makes Rock-a-Doodle feel like a cynical product rather than a genuine attempt to make a new animated classic. 

It’s a shame to judge any Don Bluth film purely in relation to its competition but Rock-a-Doodle actively invites this with its ill-conceived Roger Rabbit aspirations. Having come close to becoming plausible competition to Disney, Bluth’s status was slipping disastrously by the release of this box office disappointment. Rock-a-Doodle’s direct competition was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which became the first animated film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Rock-a-Doodle had to settle for counting itself lucky it missed out on a Razzie.

6.TITAN A.E.

Even in the early 2000s when Sci-Fi was big business, sometimes the genre’s ideas exceeded available budgets and so it was that a live action film called Planet Ice was revamped as an animation called Titan A.E. Although they had scored a big hit with Anastasia, the staff of Fox Animation Studios had no in-development projects in the late 90s and were faced with potential layoffs. So when the script for Titan A.E. arrived on the desk of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, they accepted it despite their concern over a lack of experience in the Sci-Fi genre. Although Bluth and Goldman had discussed not wanting to be Disney imitators when they moved to Fox Animation, Anastasia was very clearly heavily influenced by the films of the Disney Renaissance. By contrast, Titan A.E. is one of the Bluth productions that most successfully breaks free from the shadow of Disney, while still maintaining a sense of Bluth’s personal style. Disney’s dabblings in Sci-Fi, from Treasure Planet to Strange World, were rarely successful and their forerunner Titan A.E. still stands out as more impressive in many ways. It combines traditional and computer generated animation in a far more convincing and enduring way than contemporary animations from Disney, DreamWorks and Warner Bros. were managing. Although Titan A.E.’s huge budget was part of its commercial undoing, you can certainly see where most of the money went. Bluth and Goldman have created a stunning, epic space age backdrop for their film’s action which, while obviously showing some signs of age half a century down the line, is sufficiently stylised to still hold up impressively to this day.

As is sadly so often the case with Bluth’s films, it is the baggy plot that really hurts Titan A.E.’s chances. In this case, the screenplay was not by Bluth himself but Ben Edlund, John August and with a final polish by Joss Whedon, so its surprising that the creators of genre staples like The Tick and Firefly couldn’t come up with something wittier. Many critics also complained about the characters but Titan A.E. actually boasts some promising creations. If cynical protagonist Cale Tucker and rugged ship’s captain Korso are a bit overfamiliar, the likes of oddball scientist Gune, the urbane, bat-like Preedex and edgy munitions officer Stith all have great promise, as do amusing ancillary characters like the cockroach-esque ship’s cook. The animation is excellent, with each character differentiated by distinctive movements and mannerisms. It’s all the more frustrating then that the story and dialogue lack any real points of interest. The regular bursts of action are welcome interludes that play to the film’s visual strengths but it does grow wearing when the pace slows and the absence of a decent story becomes crushingly apparent.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of space opera style Sci-Fi so I’m not among those who claim Titan A.E. as an overlooked masterpiece but for those in love with that aesthetic I can certainly see how that would be the case. If you love your panoramic, star-dotted skyscapes then you might find enough here to excuse the plodding plot. The celebrity voice cast is also as star-studded as the scenery, with Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo, Janeane Garofalo, Drew Barrymore and Ron Perlman all putting in performances of varying commitment. This matters little though when the parts when people are talking are the moments when the film is struggling most. Overall, I’m impressed with what Bluth and Goldman achieved in a genre in which they were not confident but oh, what could’ve been with a screenplay as engaged with its characters as it is with its setting!

5.A TROLL IN CENTRAL PARK

A Troll in Central Park is generally considered to be Don Bluth’s weakest film and is often held up as an example of the nadir of the medium of feature animation in general. Even Bluth would later distance himself from its tepid storytelling, calling it a lesson learned “the hard way.” For my own part, though I acknowledge its major weaknesses in the area of plot and pacing, I don’t despise A Troll in Central Park anywhere near as much as most people seem to. Made at the same time as Thumbelina, which financiers insisted be released first due to its perceived commercial superiority, A Troll in Central Park feels like a significantly more beautiful and entertaining film. Although its story lacks weight or even any real point, that does at least make it exempt from the convolution that strangulated so many of Bluth’s previous films. It follows the simple tale of a troll named Stanley whose literal green thumb allows him to grow flowers and greenery with magical speed. His fellow trolls, who revel in their own evil and revolting nature, are disgusted by Stanley’s wholesome ways and banish him to Central Park which, surely to the bewilderment and annoyance of New Yorkers in the audience, is deemed to be “a place of rock and steel where nothing grows.” When Stanley makes the best of his situation and befriends two young children, troll leader Queen Gnorga sets out to ruin his happiness.

A simple tale of good vs. evil with a suitably short runtime and just a little too much aimless frolicking, A Troll in Central Park managed to charm me to the extent that I’ve ranked it above several of Bluth’s other works. There’s really not too much to say about the film, a fact that admittedly speaks of its flaws, but it has a decent voice cast including Dom DeLuise in his final Bluth collaboration and Cloris Leachman who clearly relishes her chance to play the villainous Gnorga. Also returning is a now-teenage Philip Glasser, Fievel himself, still playing a 7 year old. Songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who wrote An American Tail’s notable showstoppers, also contribute and the songs in A Troll in Central Park are passable enough, if ultimately as forgettable as the majority of Bluth’s musical numbers. A Troll in Central Park’s main strength is its artwork and animation. After the ugly Thumbelina, this feels like the classic Bluth style, albeit pitched at a much younger audience. The sequence of Stanley being shunted around Central Park until he winds up under a bridge features some excellent animation, especially when he is accidentally served up as part of a salad, and the constant blooming of foliage everywhere makes for an attractive, bright aesthetic which is taken to its logical conclusion in the rather lovely final sequence.

I don’t want to get too carried away here. A Troll in Central Park is still a below average animated feature but perhaps the sheer force of negative reaction associated with it lowered my expectations to the point where I could be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed. Bluth acknowledged the pressure he was under at this point in his career did not allow him to spend as much time crafting his films as would have liked. With enough time and money to properly deal with its flaws, I believe Bluth could’ve turned A Troll in Central Park into something wonderful. As it is, the film remains underrated without necessarily being recommendable. 

4. THE LAND BEFORE TIME

By the time The Land Before Time came out, Don Bluth’s success was obviously enough to put the wind up Disney. Although their release at the time, Oliver and Company, slightly outgrossed Bluth’s film, it was The Land Before Time that got the bigger buzz and better critical response. The fact that Disney hired Dom DeLuise for the voice cast of Oliver and Company basically felt like a giant “fuck you” to Bluth and the bad blood that already existed between the studios after the Bluth-led mass exodus from Disney must’ve been exacerbated by the fact that he was gaining ground on them commercially and creatively. Disney, of course, were on the cusp of their first Renaissance but with his second successful collaboration with Steven Spielberg under his belt, Bluth looked set to go from strength to strength. Unfortunately, the relationship with Spielberg was not an entirely easy one. The Land Before Time runs to barely over an hour and, while it would be nice to imagine this was a Dumbo-esque concession to economical storytelling, it was because Spielberg brought in his friend George Lucas (cue knowing groan from the stalls!) and the two had proceeded to cut the film to ribbons. Although as film fans Spielberg and Lucas shared Bluth’s love of Golden Age animation, as businessmen they weren’t prepared to upset ticket-buying parents with potentially scary material. Bluth’s films always had an edge to them, which was in keeping with the inspiration of early Disney, but Spielberg and Lucas seemed to be taking the standard reductive view that animation is for children. So The Land Before Time was softened and shortened by nearly twenty minutes.

Given that it had been so thoroughly vetted for potentially upsetting material, The Land Before Time remains fairly devastating. Spielberg appreciated the potential power of a prehistoric Bambi and so we are hit early with the death of the main character Littlefoot’s mother. Not content with having the heartbreakingly confused young dinosaur watch his mum pass away in front of him, Bluth then throws in a scene in which Littlefoot mistakes his own shadow for his resurrected parent, crushing his hopes once again. It’s a lot of tragedy to take in one go but The Land Before Time is committed to depicting a wild and dangerous life for its protagonists, which is why the frightening material Spielberg and Lucas cut out would likely have enhanced its impact even more. Interestingly, Bluth and Spielberg had discussed making The Land Before Time a silent film, inspired by the Rite of Spring segment from Fantasia. This would’ve played to Bluth’s strengths as an artist but Spielberg feared the results would be too uncommercial. Again, in pulling back from an original idea, the film ended up going too far in the other direction. Long stretches of The Land Before Time’s first act are smothered in an unnecessary and intrusive voiceover by omniscient narrator Pat Hingle. It’s not hard to follow what is happening on the screen so quite why this avuncular know-all was felt to be necessary is beyond me.

It’s surprising that The Land Before Time was such a big hit because it was Bluth’s most desolate film up to this point. By making the dinosaurs’ ultimate goal a lush green valley, Bluth saddles himself with a barren, rugged terrain as his backdrop. He manages to create an effective, oppressive atmosphere from this potentially dull setting however and The Land Before Time benefits from an authentically forbidding landscape against which the group of young dinos grope towards salvation. James Horner turns in another powerful score to accompany this journey narrative and when it is working The Land Before Time is a rich and beautiful experience. The characters are distinctive and appealing in their human-childlike behaviour and Bluth makes some smart and interesting decisions such as depicting underwater scenes using a blurry effect that makes the audience feel like they’re literally submerged in the film. On the other hand, there’s an underlying theme about prejudice that, while laudable, does seem a bit of an overreach at times. It’s hard to reconcile a message of diversity with a climax in which the dinosaurs decide the only way to deal with the existence of a pesky T-Rex is to flatten it with a boulder and drown it. Such survivalist tactics fit with a prehistoric story but clash with the clumsily realised message of unity.

Amazingly given its bare-bones storytelling, The Land Before Time went on to spawn thirteen direct-to-video sequels and a TV show. By all accounts these follow-ups are very different, trading the original’s frank and harrowing examination of life and death for lighter adventures and jaunty musical numbers. Bluth’s lack of involvement in any of these subsequent films surely robs them of his distinctive style, which is the highlight of the first film. The Land Before Time is at its best when depicting the small moments of life going on in every corner of the vast, unforgiving landscape. Bluth’s mini-vignettes involving unnamed creatures make me long for the silent epic as which The Land Before Time was once envisaged. Still, the film we ultimately got, though compromised and a notch below Bluth’s previous efforts, is mostly engaging, emotional and well realised. It certainly beats the 21st century attempts at dinosaur features by Disney and Pixar, both of which rank among those studio’s worst works. And as for Steven Spielberg… well, I’m pretty sure he never touched the subject of dinosaurs again, right? Oh wait, We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, how could I forget that one?!

3. ANASTASIA

After the string of creative and commercial flops that characterised Don Bluth’s work of the early-to-mid-90s, Anastasia is a delightful example of that which Bluth and his co-director Gary Goldman had always been capable, given a decent budget and production schedule. Now working for Fox Animation Studios with a budget about double that of their more recent films, Bluth and Goldman set about adapting the play Anastasia by Marcelle Maurette and its 1956 film adaptation by Arthur Laurents into a lavish musical adventure in a similar spirit to the recent films of the Disney Renaissance. In fact, Anastasia draws so heavily on the influence of Disney’s recent Broadway inclinations that many viewers mistake Anastasia for a Disney film even to this day. Though some scoffed at Bluth’s adoption of the approach then favoured by the studio he walked out on, it is worth remembering that the reason Bluth left Disney was that he perceived their quality control as having slipped and wanted to make films that drew on the influence of their Golden Age output. The success of Bluth’s 80s films were also key in driving the competitive spirit in Disney which played a large part in leading to their Renaissance. Now that Disney was back on top, why wouldn’t Bluth incorporate those influences into his own work? There is a nice circularity to the way that story played out.

While Anastasia is very superficially similar to 90s Disney, animation enthusiasts will immediately be able to tell the difference. There’s a heavier use of rotoscoping in Anastasia that at times makes the film look a bit awkward and some of the glazed facial expressions make the main human characters feel a bit cold and unappealing. After working with some very poor screenplays in his early 90s work, Bluth finally had a solid story in this fanciful retelling of Russian history (which was not without controversy amongst Russian historians and Orthodox Christians who held the real Anastasia as a sacred figure) but the decision to insert a rotting undead Rasputin as a villain is a telltale sign of Bluth’s bleaker and more bizarre instincts. On the one hand, the film could easily jettison Rasputin, whose attempts to kill Anastasia are fairly superfluous until the big showdown finale, which feels more mandated than natural. On the other hand, the Rasputin subplot is the thing that really puts Bluth’s stamp on the film. The animation of Rasputin’s various body parts popping out or slithering down his face to inconvenient locations is absolutely wild and deliciously morbid. This subplot also allowed for the introduction of what turned out to be the breakout character, Bartok the albino bat. His place in the film is fairly ill-defined, given that he is caught in the contradictory position of being a bad guy’s henchman and appealing strongly to the children in the audience. While Rasputin is ultimately destroyed by demons, Bartok evades comeuppance and the film closes with him breaking the fourth wall in order to draw a veil over his amorous activities with a newly-arrived lady bat. It’s a preposterous way to bow out but for the kids in the audience struggling with all the Russian history, Bartok is a lifeline and he would quickly become the subject of his own direct-to-video spinoff, Bartok the Magnificent, which was Bluth and Goldman’s next project.

Anastasia boasts an impressive voice cast, including Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer and Christopher Lloyd. Of these, only Grammer does his own singing, but the winsome feistiness of Ryan and the roguish charm of Cusack prove to be invaluable in imbuing a couple of potentially dull leads with ample personality. Lloyd, meanwhile, relishes his squishily villainous turn as Rasputin, and Hank Azaria’s idiosyncratic performance as Bartok is a large part of what made that character so popular. The songs by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, though perhaps lacking an enduring showstopper, are rather lovely and a significant improvement on the horrendous ditties that littered Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin. The rousing Journey to the Past even got itself Oscar nominated, although it is the beautiful Once Upon a December that stands out and resonates most throughout the film. The grandiose melodies are matched by Anastasia’s impressive backgrounds which do a fine job in evoking a sense of the huge, ornate Russian settings. Overall, this is a handsome production indeed and if it falls short of matching the absolute peak of the Disney Renaissance films, it does manage to stack up against or even outdo several of the contemporary Disneys that appeared at the tail end of this era. Bluth had always wanted to make animated classics and with Anastasia he was finally reaching the heights of his best 80s hits again and receiving acclaim and hefty returns at the box office. This rejuvenation was unfortunately short lived but it imbues Anastasia with an even warmer glow to know it provided Bluth with one final commercial hurrah.

2. THE SECRET OF NIMH

As an animation enthusiast, it can be hard not to give Don Bluth’s debut feature The Secret of NIMH special treatment, given that the film’s very existence feels like a minor miracle. When Bluth led a group of ten other animators on a mass exodus from Disney, it was with the intention of making animated films that put a high premium on the quality that Disney once prized so highly. By Bluth’s reckoning, the Disney of the 70s and early 80s had begun to prioritise corner-cutting and cost-saving over prestige and Bluth wanted to rediscover the magic. Bluth and his secret team of animators had been working after hours on a short film called Banjo the Woodpile Cat, which they hoped Disney might be interested in purchasing, but when their offering of a viewing was turned down flat it was the beginning of the end. Banjo the Woodpile Cat clearly showed the level of artistic excellence of which Bluth was capable but he and his team had driven themselves to exhaustion to complete it. Was it really possible for them to create a full-length feature that preserved that same quality? Even with their Disney jobs no longer eating up their daylight hours, the members of the newly established Don Bluth Productions had to work long hours for little immediate financial reward. Producer Gary Goldman recalled working weeks during late-stage production lasting 110 hours and he, Bluth and several other team members mortgaged their homes in order to obtain the budget to complete the film.

It’s remarkable to consider the tight budget on which The Secret of NIMH was produced because, whatever else might be wrong with it, it sure as hell doesn’t look cheap. Bluth and his animators have clearly busted a gut to make the film visually sumptuous. The Disney influence is clear, which is hardly surprising given that it was at Disney that Bluth first made his mark. Occasionally, such as in an unfortunately cloying scene of Mrs. Brisby and her offspring gathering round the bed of their pneumonia-stricken brother, it’s tempting to think you’re watching a Disney rip-off, but that familiarity actually comes from the fact that the previous work it evokes was Bluth’s own contribution to the legendary studio. You can tell the parts of the Disney formula that Bluth particularly admires but he goes beyond them to establish his own unique style. For instance, Golden Age Disney was always great at giving the audience a good scare but in The Secret of NIMH, Bluth seems determined to do that every few minutes. The result is a consistent and affecting atmosphere of foreboding that is matched by the ominous colour palette and relentless high stakes. No punches are pulled. This is a violent world in which numerous characters die both off and on screen, one with a projectile knife sticking in his back. That’s another thing that Bluth clearly appreciates: the fact that Disney was never meant solely for a juvenile audience. With his name on the new company, Bluth has the gumption to follow through on that promise, filling the screen with terrifying glowing-eyed predators under blood red skies.

The Secret of NIMH could have been a masterpiece if only the budget had stretched far enough to bring some professional writers on board. Instead, Robert C. O’Brien’s source novel was adapted by Bluth, Goldman and other members of Don Bluth Productions and the result lacks the focus of the Golden Age animations Bluth sought to emulate. Some additions work well, such as the heightened fantasy content which allows for many beautiful images, but Bluth overloads an already complex story with too many diversions, resulting in the finale collapsing into a sword-fight between two minor characters while the actual protagonist stands watching on the sidelines. It’s a shame because Mrs. Brisby is a bold and interesting lead, a widowed mother who is courageous and resourceful while remaining believably apprehensive and modest. The sword-fight, though brilliantly animated, feels like the moment a bunch of boys lost interest in the empathetic story they were telling. Also bringing the film down a few notches is its comic relief, Jeremy the crow, voiced by Bluth regular Dom DeLuise. The Secret of NIMH definitely feels like it needs a little palette cleanser every few scenes but Jeremy is too broadly written, performed and animated to feel like anything but a mood-shatterer. In his boisterous enthusiasm, he keeps finding himself tangled up in string, which is an apt metaphor for The Secret of NIMH’s wayward storytelling.

But for all its convoluted plotting, lead balloon comedy and overabundance of side characters, The Secret of NIMH never becomes boring because it is so flipping gorgeous. It’s rare that a film can overcome a clumsy narrative but The Secret of NIMH is carried on the strength of atmosphere and animation alone. Although there are moments in which the mouse-eared spectre of Disney looms large (the curmudgeonly Mr. Ages, whether by design or subconscious accident, is every inch a rodent Merlin), they are repeatedly swept aside by Bluth’s determination to establish his own harder-edged style. If his primary aim was to revive the spirit of the Golden Age animations without lapsing into cheap pastiche then Bluth succeeded handsomely with this impressive debut feature.

1.AN AMERICAN TAIL

Although Don Bluth Entertainment had driven itself to bankruptcy in the production of Bluth’s debut feature The Secret of NIMH, the impressive result of that creative process was fortunately enough to turn heads and open doors. Bluth partnered with businessman Morris Sullivan to establish Sullivan Bluth Studios and for the first feature by the new studio they collaborated with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg wanted this new film, about a family of Russian-Jewish mice in 1885 fleeing Cossacks for the promise of a new life in America, to be something beautiful and for this his mind went to Bluth and his work on NIMH. Spielberg’s instructions were basically to do that again. While Bluth certainly delivered another very beautiful film, An American Tail is also a very different proposition from The Secret of NIMH. 

Oddly enough, Roger Ebert rejected An American Tail for being too dark and gloomy, even though it is clearly more upbeat than the two Bluth films between which it is sandwiched, NIMH and The Land Before Time (both of which Ebert liked). Though it retains that trademark Bluth hard-edge, An American Tail plays like an American Epic boiled down to 80 minutes; a Musical Epic no less! Though it is sprawling and episodic, it is a good deal more focused in its storytelling than The Secret of NIMH, thanks to a screenplay by Sesame Street writers Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. Like NIMH, An American Tail introduces a plethora of supporting characters but they feel more rounded this time. Tiger, for instance, is often the best remembered of the supporting cast but he spends a surprisingly small amount of time on screen (his role was extended in the lacklustre Bluth-free sequel Fievel Goes West). In that time though he makes his mark, thanks to some nice writing, delightful animation and a great performance from Dom DeLuise, whose voice fits a big pudgy cat much better than it did a scrawny slapstick crow in The Secret of NIMH. Even the smallest characters are delightfully memorable, such as the jittery cockroach Digit, sidekick of the brilliantly slimy villain Warren T. Rat whose dark secret is one of An American Tale’s best twists.

There were a lot of animated mice films around during this era. The Rescuers was a recent hit and also the reason Disney gave for turning down Bluth’s Secret of NIMH pitch. Bluth was also patronisingly told that Disney already has a mouse called Mickey, yet only a few years later they were making The Great Mouse Detective, An American Tail’s direct competition. Although The Great Mouse Detective got stronger critical notices, An American Tail actually beat it at the box office, initially making a higher profit and becoming the highest grossing non-Disney feature at the time. But it wasn’t so much these other mouse films or Disney in general to which An American Tail most seemed to be looking for inspiration. Although its beautiful artwork continues Bluth’s desire to reinstate the creative highs of animation’s golden age, An American Tail feels like a cine-literate work paying tribute to classic live-action Musicals. So Christopher Plummer’s French pigeon Henri seems to have flown out of an anthropomorphic animal version of Gigi, the song There Are No Cats in America feels like a loving pastiche of West Side Story and the relationship between Fievel and the streetwise Tony has echoes of Oliver and the Artful Dodger. These touchstones help An American Tail stand out from other animated films that were aiming too squarely at an audience of children exclusively. From the opening scenes of antisemitic terrorism, An American Tail is clearly a film of greater dramatic weight. Though it does have the odd moment of sap (the Statue of Liberty winking at Fievel is an unfortunate last minute cringe-wrinkle), it is by no means the blindly patriotic propaganda that its title might suggest. In fact, the narrative is dense with themes about deceptive appearances and too-good-to-be-true myths about the Land of the Free that immediately reveal themselves to be untrue when landing upon its shores. An American Tail is not a cynical film but neither is it a naïve one.

Another thing that An American Tail has that was unusual for non-Disney films (or even Disney films of the time) is great songs. Written by Brill Building legends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann in collaboration with score composer James Horner, the likes of Never Say Never and A Duo have a classic style and instantly embed themselves in your head to be plucked out at will during the subsequent days’ showers. There Are No Cats in America is brilliantly satirical, juxtaposing mournful stories of personal loss with a deliriously upbeat chorus, the delusional nature of which drips with dramatic irony. The major hit of the film was its big ballad, Somewhere Out There, a song that manages to blend its saccharine sentiment with a genuine rush of emotion and a timeless melody to create something classically affecting. Were it not for the late-decade arrival of The Little Mermaid, Somewhere Out There probably would have staked its claim to the title of most memorable song from an 80s animated feature. It feels like a natural successor to the evergreen When You Wish Upon a Star, securing an Oscar nomination but losing out to Take My Breath Away from Top Gun.

As a popular hit rather than the cult item that The Secret of NIMH became, An American Tail is sometimes comparatively undervalued but I think it is the better of the two films. While NIMH may be slightly more beautiful to look at, An American Tail has much stronger characters and a better delineated narrative, all of which bolsters Bluth’s typically sumptuous animation. Fievel even managed to carve out a semi-iconic place of his own in the rodent hall of fame, taking his place beside the logo of Spielberg’s subsequent Amblimation subsidiary. While that was a short lived venture, Fievel’s selection as its official mascot was testament to his public appeal and he still has a special place in the hearts of those who can’t hum even a few bars of Somewhere Out There without welling up a bit. Me, OK, I’m talking about me!