The Kokomo Post Rewinds: Non-Disney animated movies
By DAN WEST
The Kokomo Post Staff
Nostalgia can be a heck of a thing, but do the movies we loved as kids really hold up? Is “Space Jam” really my favorite movie, or have I just not watched it since I was 10? In The Kokomo Post Rewinds, we will check out movies and shows from decades past and see if they hold up to today’s scrutiny. This week’s theme: non-Disney animated movies!
In the writer’s meeting, when someone asked “should we warn people how scary this movie is?”
“The Secret of NIMH”
I was a big fan of this book series as a kid, and I remember this movie being absolutely incredible. I had plenty of laughs, the animation was great, and they really did a great job making me care about the characters. This story follows the widowed mouse Mrs. Frisby as she seeks help from genetically modified super-intelligent rats so she can safely move her family when the farmer plows his field. There are elements of “Watership Down” and the “Redwall” series here, and I absolutely loved it.
The Verdict: This is a kid’s movie?! Start to finish, this movie is incredibly dark. It does an excellent job showing how everything is dangerous and terrifying to a mouse, but it goes even further than that. The owl is horrifying, the wise old rat Nicodemus looks like a monster, and there’s a bloody sword fight at the end. All that being said, this is an incredibly sweet movie with great animation and some phenomenal voice acting.
4 episodes of “Are You Afraid Of The Dark” out of 5: This is a great movie, but it’s definitely not one to show your younger kids. Save it for middle school or later; it’ll hold off on nightmares. In the meantime, consider reading the books, available here.
Sure, we COULD make a movie that feels good and sensibly follows how sweet this scene is. Or we could make audiences watch kids starve and cry for an hour.
“The Land Before Time”
I loved this movie as a kid, although I never saw any of the sequels (somehow there are 14 movies plus two seasons of a television series), but this first one has always held a special place in my heart. The antics of Littlefoot and his friends as they grow up in a changing world were hilarious and special to me, and I remember them very fondly.
The Verdict: THIS is a kid’s movie?!?! The movie starts with the story of how dinosaurs are dying out because their food sources are fading and they’re having fewer babies. How’s that for the first scene in a movie for children? It continues on with the mother explaining that they won’t be starving or lonely anymore if they complete their journey to a place they’ve only heard about in legends. This is a cartoon, for crying out loud! Let’s not forget the scene where Littlefoot thinks his shadow is really his mom, then cries as the narrator says “then Littlefoot was truly certain he was alone.” This is not a good movie for children.
2 “remember when Six Flags was called Great America?” out of 5: This is a well-made movie with solid animation, but it is absolutely not for children. In the first 20 minutes, I expected a lot more “ kid-learning-life-lessons” and a lot less “giant-predator-hunting-children-presses-spiked-vines-into-the-ground-on-top-of-children-before-an-earthquake-turns-one-kid-into-an-orphan-and-separates-the-rest-of-the-kids-from-their-parents.”
I walked in expecting this, and instead learned that Italy has a cat mafia that killed a character’s mom and left her rosary on the ground. Seems totally reasonable.
“An American Tail”
This was one of my favorite movies as a child. The music was amazing, the characters were relatable, and the adventure was thrilling. This young Russian Jewish immigrant fleeing the chaos of his home to come to America was brilliantly done and has always stayed with me. And the song “Somewhere Out There” still gives me chills every time I hear it. This movie is the reason I took on this project, and I was incredibly excited to sit down and watch it again.
The Verdict: HOW ARE THESE ALL KIDS’ MOVIES? There is so much death and destruction in this movie, so much intense depression, and I’m not surprised that I didn’t remember the visual horror of the Great Mouse of Minsk, because I’m sure I just repressed it. I remembered a happy-go-lucky story of a mouse searching for his family and making amazing friends along the way like a vegetarian cat named Tiger, not a tiny Irish mouse finding the dead body of his lost love after she was killed by cats. Don’t get me wrong, this is a beautifully done movie. Every aspect is artistically perfect, from the animation to the writing to the music to the voice acting. That’s probably why I had such a visceral reaction to how intense it is.
5 “that scene from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure with Large Marge” out of 5: This is a brilliantly done movie, it’s just very intense. Definitely not for younger kids, but a must for when they get older. Also, skip the sequel. It’s not as good as you remember. Check out Roger Ebert’s 2.5 star rating here, where he says he’s glad he doesn’t have to watch it again.
