To me, this movie is perfection.

Really Surprised!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I was shocked after watching this movie! Yes, I sat all the way through! Let's start off by this short summary of Don Bluth which explains my deepest wonder about this disturbing movie: The man who worked for Disney left it to persue his own animation career, was a tough rival to Disney in the 80's with great animated movies like The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988) and All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). Then Disney came back on track with their animated musicals, and Bluth follows in their footsteps after observing their success. He should have been able to do that in his sleep, but it turns out one awful movie after the other leaving his usually thought-provoking and grim stories behind in exchange for ugly and bland babysitter fodder with unlikable characters and terrible songs. About "Thumbelina": We have a main character who spends almost the entire movie whining about either her size or that any attempt of helping herself get what she seeks is hopeless. She constantly makes bad choices every single time she meets a new acqaintance in the unknown nature. That is dumb and irresponsible and by no means a good example for kids. The animals she meets are either annoying, useless or unlikable, so they do not help lifting this poor Disney wannabe out of the garbage can. Speaking of which, the only partially enjoyable song in this movie is strikingly similar to Disney's Aladdin's giant hit "A Whole New World", yeah, Bluth was certainly desperate. The rest is short, the songs are mostly awful, the animation is sub-par to his earlier work, the voice acting was also mostly lousy, but the beautiful voice of Jodi Benson stuck out as decent. Her singing voice is amazing, but her lines were terrible as mentioned before. Notice we have two actors famous for their Disney roles, Benson from "The Little Mermaid" and Gilbert Gottfried from "Aladdin". I'd say avoid this movie, I only watched it to see how bad Bluth's 90's movies were and this was very bad.

I watched it for the first time today, so I don't have the nostalgia a lot of reviewers do. In fact, the only Thumbelina movie I ever saw as a kid was a knockoff one with parts done in live-action, probably from about the same time. A few things about it were really annoying for me. There are a few plot holes, (Why can't Jacquimo just fly Thumbelina back home? How does winter come the day after Autumn begins?) some characters were really annoying, (the little bugs, the toads, the beetle, Jacquimo, etc.) and how hard the moral was nailed into my head from beginning to end. Take a drink every time you hear "Nothing is impossible!" or "Follow your heart!", you'll be wasted in no time. Also, don't listen to Marry the Mole. It's not sung well, the background music isn't too good, and the lyrics are just plain bad. But it's an okay, cute movie for the kids. It's no Disney Princess movie, but it's decent.

It seems every story about that has Thumbelina in it seems to always talk about her finding love and then being taken to marry some other creature only to be rescued by her lover. This one is no exception to the trend. The first one I watched was a mole, now it's a toad, what will be next? Maybe a caterpillar? It seems like in this version everyone wants to have Thumbelina as their bride. It feels sort of annoying because it was one thing after another. It was OK for an adventure story for kids but to me, the concept was going a bit long. When it's about 45 minutes of nothing but people fighting over her without even letting her have a say, it just bugs me. And then she picks someone who had almost no real character growth and was this side prince looking for her. Just… the characters felt boring and predictable. The only character who had any personality was a… I want to say French… sparrow who would sing about love and try to push the two lovers together. And he didn't even have much too even do in the story, he just would sing songs of love and slightly try to be the voice of wisdom though even then, he only talked about the thoughts in ones heart and not their head. Somehow I don't think that's being the voice of wisdom but he was the better one out of any of them.The animation was actually the better part of the show. It was beautifully done and rather clean. The only problem I had was characters would move slightly strange, putting their arms up in ways that feel slightly awkward. Other then that, the clothing is really fluid and I didn't really find any hiccups in the animation where they would forget something or they would forget a frame or two. The characters are really beautiful, looking much more proportional then some other's I watched, except for The frogs. I don't think they really ever seen a frog before because next to all the other characters, they just look like blobs. The brothers act more like Moe, Curly, and Larry by the way. Smacking each other and acting like idiots, you could wonder if they are just in their for comedy. Sadly, even when I was little, I just did not get the humor.The soundtrack to this is actually not that bad though there are a lot of songs. Some sound like Disney songs while other's fall pretty flat. The same goes for the voice acting as I liked some but others just did not have enough power that they should, Characters like Thumbelina (might I remind you main character here) sounds way to quiet and childish. I don't like her's much. Why the characters have such strange ascents also is beyond me. You start with Jaquimo who is a French ascent (Beautifully done I think), then we have The crazy toad family that sounds like a mixture of Spanish and French with a little bit of Jamaican, the unmistakable voice of Gilbert Gottfried as Mr. Beetle (Seriously, what the hell is that accent anyway?) and then Thumbelina and her Mother, even the fairies, have a old English ascent making me want to yell out 'choose a country already!' All these things add up to a movie that doesn't exactly live up expectations. If feels like it hit the mark a bit flat from where it should of though at the time of its release, it was a pretty big seller if I remember correctly. I had even went to see it in the movies when I was little which was a big deal being a family with not that much money or time.

This film is amazing to put it bluntly. Speaking as a 17 year old girl, I first watched this film when I was around 5/6 and instantly fell in love with the protagonist (Thumbelina) and the extremely catchy songs throughout. Around 11 years later, I'm still completely besotted with the film.It is a beautiful film and definitely worth a watch. People who have slated the film for different reasons have taken the film too seriously considering it is intended for a younger audience, which needs to be taken into consideration. Over all, however, I give this film a 10. Guaranteed it is worth a watch, you will love it.