The Secret of NIMH (1982) (SPOILERS) Don Bluth, Disney renegade, left the Mouse House in 1979 for noble reasons. He sought to restore animation to its former glories, bringing the respect due to an art form that had waned in the wake of his former employer’s cost cutting, increasingly careless approach. The first fruits of his defection were realised in The Secret of NIMH , an adaptation of Robert C O’Brien’s Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH . Bluth more than achieved his goal. He put animation back on a pedestal (and no doubt his competing presence gave Disney a much needed kick in the pants). Unfortunately, he came up short in another area that had traditionally been a Disney strong suit: story. What hurts most about this is that he had such sterling source material. I read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH before I saw the film. It was a novel that wonderfully exercised the imagination, carrying a strong undercurrent of hidden secrets and a mythic past (to that ex