Thumbelina (1994)

Thumbelina (1994)

Ironic that ex-Disney animator Don Bluth tried to beat Disney at its own game by imitating their style instead of the other way round, and yet he did a pretty terrible job at doing so with this film.

Genre:	Animation Musical Fantasy Drama Romance
Directed By:	Don Bluth Gary Goldman
Produced By:	Don Bluth Gary Goldman John Pomeroy
Written By/Screenplay:	Don Bluth
Based On:	Thumbelina by Hans Christian Andersen
Starring:	Jodi Benson Barbara Cook Carol Channing Gilbert Gottfried Charo John Hurt Gino Conforti Gary Imhoff Joe Lynch
Distributed By:	Warner Bros. (formerly) 20th Century Fox (currently)
Release Date:	March 30, 1994
Runtime:	86 Minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$28 million
Box Office:	$11.3 million

Thumbelina is a 1994 American animated movie based on the Hans Christian Anderson book of the same name, it was directed by Gary Goldman and Don Bluth, originally distributed by Warner Bros, but later 20th Century Fox got the rights.

Plot

Thumbelina, a thumb-sized girl, yearns for the company of someone her own size. Her life is changed forever after she meets and falls in love with Cornelius, a fairy prince. But along the way, she encounters lovesick toads, beetles, and moles who are attracted to her, as well as a romantic French swallow and a bunch of jitterbugs before reuniting with her true love.

Why It Deserves a Huge THUMBS Down to Don Bluth

Unlike the previous animated feature films based on fairy tales (like the ones from the Disney Animated Canon), the writing, tone, and characterizations of the film overall are extremely childish and juvenile (even for Don Bluth of all people, though nowhere near as bad as Bluth's other terrible film, A Troll in Central Park) as it mainly only caters strictly to the youngest of the target audience (which is mainly for little girls ages 12 and under) with little-to-nothing else to offer for the entertainment of the older audiences, as explained by all the various problems as listed below.
- Granted, there were a lot of Disney-inspired fairytale-esque animated musical feature films in the 1990s decade churned out from other non-Disney studios (of the time) such as New Line Cinema/Crest Animation Studios' The Swan Princess (which coincidentally, was also released the same year as this film), Warner Bros.' Quest for Camelot (which co-incidentally was also distributed by Warner Bros. back in the 1990s decade) and even Bluth's own Anastasia which he would later produce with and for 20th Century Fox three years later, but at least they tried to offer some form of entertainment for the older audiences in one way or another despite their main target audience of children (even if they failed to), and are still nowhere near as childish or juvenile as this film though.
- Due to the film's overall cutesy, saccharine and juvenile nature, such as the overly-cutesy look used on most of the animal characters such as Jacquimo and the jitterbugs for example (see WIATD #6), as well as its very poorly-written female lead character that feels a lot like a Disney Princess stereotype (in a BAD way) (see WIATD #3), the film at times feels more like a stereotypical caricature/parody of a Disney Princess fairytale animated movie than an actual animated fairytale movie in its own right.
Annoying voice acting, especially from Gilbert Gottfried, who voices Berkeley Beetle, and even Jodi Benson as the titular character, who was best known for her role as Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid.
There are so many problems with the characters, as most of them, are either total dim-wits or utterly pointless, and in general, have very flat characterizations with nothing else to offer to their personalities aside from just one or two character traits or quirks;
- There are so many of them that listing it will take forever, so let's start off with its ineffective protagonists;
  - Thumbelina is a very weak, whiny, and unlikable female protagonist in this movie, as she is way too much of a dumb, passive damsel-in-distress who is far too weak to stand up for herself and often gets easily demotivated when something goes wrong in her life (so much to the point that it makes her a huge Butt-Monkey throughout the film), and has no personality or purpose in life other than to be with her love interest Prince Cornelius. She is also super-immature (even for her age), very clingy (especially to Jacquimo and Prince Cornelius), and is a huge crybaby who cries a lot over things that aren't that big of a deal such as when Berkeley calls her ugly and when she gets lost on the way home, to the point that it gets annoying after a while.
    - To add salt to the wound, Thumbelina herself has been flanderized from the Hans Christian Andersen book quite badly, because just like many other characters from Andersen's stories, her original book counterpart isn't a well-written character, to begin with for animated film standards, since most of his characters are basically weak and reactive characters where things happen to these characters instead of them doing something to drive their plot, which doesn't make an interesting or compelling character for the screen. So her original book counterpart, while still a weak and whiny character, is nowhere near as dumb, passive, immature, and clingy as Bluth made her out to be in this film.
    - Despite Thumbelina being the MAIN protagonist and getting a fair amount of screen time, she barely has any agency of her own nor does she have an active role in doing anything important throughout the film, hence making her more of a plot device than a character.
  - Prince Cornelius is nothing more than a bland "prince charming" archetype love interest who only exists just to be Thumbelina's love interest and to save her from her troubles.
  - Jacquimo, the bird who helps Thumbelina, is an extremely annoying and unlikable comic relief sidekick who constantly speaks about "impossible love" in a cheesy French accent non-stop that it gets on your nerves very quickly, and comes off as pointless for the most part due to how useless he is to the point that he, despite his best intentions at optimism and helpfulness towards Thumbelina, only ends up making things even worse for her due to his own stupidity.
  - The jitterbugs are very bland, forgettable, and saccharinely cutesy, and serve no purpose in the film other than being "stereotypical cute animal sidekicks" for Thumbelina in the vein of the Forest Animals from both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty, even though they're the most likable characters of the film. In addition, the way they're designed which is very reminiscent to early-1930s "rubberhose"-style animated Disney cartoons in contrast to the rest of the characters which are drawn in Bluth's Golden Age Disney-inspired art style, makes them look out of place in this film.
  - Thumbelina's mother is pointless as she's barely in the film; she even gave up on trying to find her daughter Thumbelina once winter comes.
- The antagonists aren't any better either, especially since the story is very confusing and you will never know who the main villain is - for example, it may be Mrs. Toad because she kidnapped Thumbelina, or her eldest son Grundel Toad who has the largest role of all the antagonists, or maybe Berkeley Beetle, or Mr. Mole, the movie doesn't give you any proper explanation.
  - The film's male antagonists in general such as Grundel Toad, Berkeley Beetle, and Mr. Mole have very flat characterizations as they all come off as nothing more than sleazy, lustful perverts who are attracted to Thumbelina for only either her lovely appearance and her beautiful singing voice and not her personality, and aren't that interesting in the slightest either since that's basically their only defining character traits.
  - Speaking of Grundel, despite him being supposed to be the film's main antagonist, he is too dumb and ineffective to be a major threat, with the only reason why he managed to be a threat to both Thumbelina and the jitterbugs just show how much of complete weaklings both her and the jitterbugs are. In addition to his lustful characterization as mentioned above, he barely does or says much for the main antagonist, and often speaks in broken English, with half of his dialogue being basically "I love (Thumbelina)" and "I marry (Thumbelina)", which makes him an ineffective villain, and also an offensively racist stereotype of Mexicans.
  - Speaking of Grundel, his mother Mrs. Toad was the one responsible for kidnapping Thumbelina and therefore was almost coming close to being the main villain that way, but she failed miserably as a villain though, since she comes off as nothing more than an annoying stereotypical Mexican diva who pressures Thumbelina to partake in the family musical act, the Singers De España, which makes her come off as an offensive racial stereotype towards Mexicans. Worse still, unlike the rest of the other antagonists, she never gets any comeuppance for her actions at all, which makes her a Karma Houdini.
  - Berkeley Beetle is an annoying, unfunny, perverted, wisecracking comic relief lackey whose role is a pale knock-off of Iago from Aladdin (right down to being voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, who also voices Iago) as well as Dan Backslide, the main antagonist of the 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon "The Dover Boys", since both characters are hammy, over-the-top comic-relief antagonists with unnatural skin color complexions in pursuit of the female leads for selfish purposes, except that Dan is funny while Berkeley is not.
  - Mr. Mole and Ms. Fieldmouse both have the potential to become effective antagonists unlike both Grundel Toad and Berkeley Beetle, with Mr. Mole being (heavily implied) to be an evil serial killer who outright kills insects and other small living creatures for taxidermy purposes, and Ms. Fieldmouse being a greedy, emotionally-manipulative mother figure, but unfortunately, this opportunity is sorely missed due to them appearing way too late into the film, as both of them only appeared about three quarters into the film.
  - Mozo and Gringo Toad (Grundel Toad's younger brothers) are pointless and unnecessary characters that serve no purpose in the film at all, in fact, they only appear in two scenes where both of them contribute nothing to the plot, first during the musical number "On the Road" and then later on when they laugh at and make fun of Grundel when Thumbelina left him and "gave him the slip". You can cut these two out of the film and the plot wouldn't even change in the slightest.
On the topic of its characters, the film feels rather overstuffed with a large number of characters, and as a result, the plot constantly has to sidetrack with subplots — it has to shift around from Thumbelina finding her way home on her own (and getting miserable over her predicaments in the process), Prince Cornelius flying on his bumblebee to rescue Thumbelina, Jacquimo looking for the Vale of the Fairies, the jitterbugs attempting to help out Thumbelina (and then Prince Cornelius), Thumbelina's heartbroken mother comforted by her fellow farm animals while she isolates herself at home, and both the antagonists Grundel Toad and Berkeley Beetle teaming up just so that the former could have Thumbelina all to himself.
The film overall had a troubled production, which is what negatively affected the film's script and storytelling in the first place. According to Bluth in a 2010 interview, he hired a screenwriter to write a draft that Bluth ended up rejecting, but due to time constraints, Bluth was forced to write the film's entire script all by himself in two weeks, hence why the film is poorly-executed.
- It should also be noted by Bluth that he wanted the film to be about searching for one's self, whereas when he originally rewrote the film's script Thumbelina was offered several options that she could think and choose what she wants from her life which has huge potential at giving her a more proactive role than in the final film, but just about everyone else involved in the making of the film down-voted his idea.
Some screen-testing showed the Disney logo despite being a Warner Bros. film (at the time) and not a Disney film. Ironically, the film itself ended up being officially a Disney property following Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox (the studio that inherited the rights of this film from Warner Bros. in 2002) in 2019.
While the animation is good, sometimes the animation is reused in some of the scenes, and the CGI transition scenes used in both the opening shots set in Paris and the pond where the toads live are poor and haven't even aged well.
- While the character designs, in general, are great, however, some of the animal characters such as Thumbelina's mother's farm animals, Hero the dog, the jitterbugs, and various background animals look as if the filmmakers tried too hard to make them as cute and human-like as possible, right down to giving some of them human-like clothing and hats and giving Hero the dog a human-like mustache, to the point that their designs at times look sickly sweet and saccharine, though nowhere near as much as Stanley's sentient talking flowers from A Troll in Central Park.
  - Executive meddling: During the production of the film, Bluth was tasked by his distributors to create as many characters as possible as potential marketing material, regardless of how pointless some of the animal characters are in the film, hence explaining why many of the animals looked that way in this film.
Forgettable songs, especially: "Thumbelina", "You're Beautiful Baby", in which Berkley and the other beetle's voices are extremely annoying and ear-grating, and "Marry the Mole" which caused this movie to be the first animated movie to be nominated for Razzies in any category (in this case, Worst Original Song).
While Ms. Fieldmouse sings ''Marry the Mole'', she mentions Romeo and Juliet, which may be creepy for younger viewers, since the Romeo and Juliet story is basically about the two of the title characters being two young star-crossed lovers whose strong mutual romantic attraction towards each other ultimately results to their deaths.
- Similarly, earlier at the start of the film, Jacquimo also mentions the stories of both Samson and Delilah from the novel Samson The Nazarite by Vladimir Jabotinsky and the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet from the William Shakespeare play of the same name as examples of "impossible love" before mentioning about the story of Thumbelina, which is also too dark for younger viewers, since both stories in question have tragic endings where either one or both members of the romantic couple die in the end.
Poor grasp on the source material: The film doesn't follow the book correctly despite what's mentioned in RQ#6.
- Thumbelina was born in a tulip in the book, while here she was born in a different flower.
- Mrs. Toad has three sons while in the book she had only one.
- The bumblebee that the prince has wasn't in the book.
- The prince didn't meet Thumbelina until the end of the book.
- In the book, the mole is the main antagonist who plays a much larger role in the story, while in the film the role of the main antagonist is given to the toad instead.
- Like the prince, the swallow didn't meet Thumbelina until near the end of the book.
- The book outright forgets about Thumbelina's mother at the end, unlike the film where she at least receives a brief cameo at the end during Thumbelina's wedding.
  - On a belated note, given that the film is an overall faithful adaptation to Hans Christian Andersen’s book of the same name that wasn't really that good, to begin with (at least for screen adaptations) despite these small changes made above due to its very weak and reactive lead character (which was a problem that was commonly found in Andersen's original stories, with the notable exception of The Snow Queen, and to some extent, The Little Mermaid), it is doomed from the start based off that fact alone. This is unlike both Disney's The Little Mermaid and Frozen, both of which coincidentally were based on both of his stories The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen respectively and was, in contrast, based off many better-written books (at least for screen adaptations) and they have been heavily altered by Disney with their own creative adjustments to fix most of the problems present in their respective source materials.
The movie was released around the same time as other better-animated movies like: The Lion King, Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm, and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, which is a big reason why this movie bombed horribly at the box office.
Countless plot holes, brought in as the result of bad writing and plot contrivance. Among of them include:
- The BIGGEST plot hole here: Why doesn't Jacquimo even attempt to fly Thumbelina back to her home until at least near the end of the film? He even claims that he's physically unable to fly Thumbelina home on his back, which turns out to be untrue near the end of the film.
  - On that topic, a huge amount of the plot could have been completely avoided had Jacquimo immediately flown Thumbelina home on his back right from the start instead of leaving Thumbelina to find her way home on her own in the wide open world, hence sparing her from her unending misery of getting lost and getting captured by Berkeley Beetle, Ms. Fieldmouse and Mr. Mole and therefore reduces her chances of needlessly whining and crying non-stop throughout the entire film in the process.
- Why does Thumbelina cheerfully dance to all the villain songs ("On the Road", "You're Beautiful Baby", and "Marry the Mole") along with her respective captors (Grundel and his family, Berkeley and the beetles, Ms. Fieldmouse, respectively) despite the fact that all the respective villains in question are attempting to force her to marry them against her will?
- Why would Berkeley, who at first thinks that Thumbelina is beautiful, then suddenly changes his mind and says that she's ugly once her butterfly disguise falls off all because of pressure from the beetle chorus and the Beetle Ballroom insect audience, even though he's the one who found Thumbelina to be beautiful even without her butterfly disguise in the first place?
- Why doesn't Thumbelina's mother even attempt to look for her lost daughter once winter comes?
- How does Ms. Fieldmouse know everything about what has been happening to Thumbelina and her entire life, including the presumed death of Prince Cornelius, even before she appeared three-quarters into the film and met Thumbelina herself in person?
- The scene where Thumbelina stands up against the idea of marrying Mr. Mole, Berkeley, and Grundel by the film's climax comes completely out of nowhere, as the film already has established her as a complete weakling with no agency in her own whatsoever and is unable to stand up for herself and therefore is a total doormat who is easily manipulated by anyone. Not only that, she never showed any hinting of her ability to stand up for herself as the film progresses so her all of the sudden standing up for herself here feels like it comes out of nowhere, only because she remembers the good memories she had with Prince Cornelius via flashbacks of she and him singing "Let Me Be Your Wings" together as she miserably walks down the aisle to marry Mr. Mole, hence giving a bad message to girls that "you only need a man in order to be strong" which is not true. She could've started off in the film as a weak doormat as she first started since the time Mrs. Toad kidnapped her while in her walnut bed but slowly learns to gain some moments of agency and to stand up for herself as the movie went on, and by the end, she would be a strong independent character who could decide things for herself with a mind of her own. But instead, she just starts the film off as a weak doormat with zero agency whatsoever and is kept that way for most of the film's entire runtime and then suddenly gains some form of agency of her own without much proper build-up or development to it.
  - To add salt to the wound, after Jacquimo returns to pick up Thumbelina from Mr. Mole's home to take her to the Vale of the Fairies he recently found, she goes back to her old whiny ways, such as how she gets demotivated over how her love interest Prince Cornelius isn't coming back to life despite Jacquimo's persuasion when at the Vale of the Fairies, it practically undoes that brief moment of character development she had in her previous scene, making the entire scene of the film where she stands up against those lustful antagonists of hers extremely redundant.
- How does Thumbelina's beautiful singing voice have the ability to melt the ice and frost covering the Vale of the Fairies near the end of the film?
- The film never even explains how Thumbelina gets her own fairy wings at the end of the film once she agrees to marry Prince Cornelius.
The film's pacing is very slow and poor, with loads of filler.
Mrs. Toad looks more like her voice actress (Charo) than a toad. In addition, her oversized breasts make her character design very inappropriate for a family film.
While unintentional, there are numerous instances where Thumbelina receives a lot of up-skirt shots due to her skirt going up and down from above her waist and therefore exposing her bare legs in the process many times, which could be a bit risqué for a family film.
- Speaking of which, near the end of the musical number "You're Beautiful Baby", there is a disgustingly embarrassing scene where Thumbelina's butterfly disguise falls off when she dances with Berkeley, exposing her in her underwear in the process. What's even worse is that she still proceeds to dance on stage in her underwear until he dumps her for being ugly!
Similar in vein to other bad Disney-esque animated musicals of the 1990s decade, it feels like an unoriginal Disney rip-off that doesn't even try to be its own film with numerous scenes and elements that are rip-offs to various Disney animated films. There are so many of the scenes ripped off from various Disney animated films that listing them will take forever, so here are just a few examples:
- The book opening intro at the beginning is ripped-off from the book opening intro seen in various older Disney movies such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
- The entire opening scene involving Jacquimo singing "Follow Your Heart" while flying around the CGI-animated Paris is a rip-off of the entire opening sequence of Jiminy Cricket singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Pinocchio.
- Thumbelina, is a rip-off of various Disney Princesses created before her, specifically Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, and Ariel from The Little Mermaid at some parts (the latter character is also both voiced by Jodi Benson), except with none of everything that made both Snow White and Ariel such great, likable and memorable characters. In fact, if you take away both Snow White and Ariel's respective bits of intelligence, maturities, resilience, inner strengths, and resourcefulness, you're basically left with Thumbelina in a nutshell.
- Thumbelina is born fully grown and fully clothed, and therefore is painfully naïve despite her age because she was practically (or literally) born yesterday in the events of the film, much like the titular main protagonist from Pinocchio.
- Thumbelina sings a rather vague "I want..." song entitled "Soon", which is similar to that of Ariel singing Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid, Snow White singing "I'm Wishing" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Aurora singing "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty.
  - Speaking of which, the songs, while not being direct copycats of pre-existing Disney and other musical songs, are heavily derivative of those from Disney movies and other animated musicals produced beforehand, such as the song "Thumbelina" being heavily derivative of the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast, "Follow Your Heart" being heavily derivative of the song "Never Say Never" from Bluth's own An American Tail (ironically enough), "Let Me Be Your Wings" being heavily derivative of the song "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, and the Mother's reprise of "Soon" being heavily derivative of the song "Your Mother and Mine" from Peter Pan.
- Thumbelina's first encounter with Prince Cornelius is directly ripped-off from the exact same scene from Sleeping Beauty where Aurora first meets Prince Phillip in the woods, right down to end with a romantic duet between both Thumbelina and Prince Cornelius.
- Thumbelina's first encounter with the jitterbugs is directly ripped off from a similar scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when Snow White first encounters the forest animals when stranded in the forest.
- Grundel’s role as the main antagonist is basically a dumb, watered-down Mexican version of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.
- The scene where Thumbelina and Prince Cornelius fly with the bumblebee to show her the world, rips off the scene of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin.
- And for Berkeley, his overall role of a wisecracking comic relief lackey to Grundel is a pale knock-off of Iago from Aladdin, as both of them are voiced by Gottfried.
- In some scenes there appear to be random items or background characters scattered throughout the film that are said to be references or homages to Disney's older animated catalog, like the honey pot similar to the one seen in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which Jacquimo got caught in after getting a thorn in his wing seen in the forest in one scene.
- The film's overall narrative tries too hard to be more like the early Disney animated feature films of the 1930s-1950s, but fails miserably.
On that topic, at times it also ironically feels like a rip-off of Bluth's own An American Tail, as both films also feature a childlike protagonist who gets lost in a big world and embark on a big journey to find their way home through various perils and a hostile world of crooks and monsters, as well as both films also featuring French-accented bird sidekicks to the protagonists, with the Jacquimo character overall basically being a dumb, annoying version of Henri from the said film.
Thumbelina and Prince Cornelius' romantic chemistry is incredibly bland, very rushed, and clichéd, because they don't take their time to know each other and get married way too soon; Thumbelina and Prince Cornelius meet for only one night and the latter spends the rest of the film looking for Thumbelina, after she gets kidnapped, but winds up in danger while trying to find her way home. The two meet again and get married at the end of the film, even though they've known each other for only one night.
In the scene where the camera is zoomed in Thumbelina's face holds on for too long for no reason and looks blurred and ugly.
Lame and unfunny attempts at humor.
The film can't decide if it wants to be the same or different from the books.
Since most of the film is entirely focused on Thumbelina becoming miserable over getting lost far from home and being unable to be with her love interest Prince Cornelius, it can get too dark and depressing for younger children, despite being rated G. Not helping is the fact that Thumbelina's constant whining and crying over her predicaments throughout the film makes things even worse.
- On that topic, the film tries to make the audience feel sorry/sad for Thumbelina each time she whines and cries, but instead it makes you feel blatantly annoyed, irritated, aggravated, and/or horribly depressed, mainly due to not only does she easily get upset over the smallest of misfortunes, yet she is an easily-demotivated defeatist who barely even does anything in the film other than moping and whining and therefore her sadness continues to drag on for way too long throughout most of the film until near the ending.
Poor dialogue.
The wedding dress Thumbelina wears to marry Mr. Mole near the end looks very laughable.
Horrible morals, none of which are true in the slightest, such as:
- "It's okay to marry a potential abuser"
- "It's okay to accept the abuse you've been given instead of standing up for yourself"
- "It's okay to become completely and blindly dependent on someone else without regard for logic or reasoning"
- "If you only whine and mope around, you'll eventually get what you want"
- And its most notoriously and blatantly tagged-on moral lesson: "You only need a man to have happiness"
Two particular characters from this film, Mr. Mole and Ms. Fieldmouse, are named after the animals that they resemble, which are utterly lazy.

Redeeming Qualities

The animation (despite being re-used at times) is a great step up from Bluth’s previous animated movies despite the ugly CGI effects.
The voice acting is good at times, even if it can be annoying.
There are some decent songs like: "Soon", "Follow Your Heart" and "Let Me Be Your Wings", the most iconic song in the film.
The jitterbugs, while bland, forgettable, saccharinely cutesy, pointless, and look out-of-place in the film, are the only likable characters of the film (as mentioned in WIATD #3).
While annoying and useless for the most part, Jacquimo does help Thumbelina at one point.
For the most part, it does follow the book right and stays true to the source material, except for a few modifications (as mentioned in WIATD #9).
There are only two scenes worth a laugh which is arguably the funniest scenes from this film (though that isn't enough to save this awful film though);
- The scene of Grundel Toad being made fun and laughed at by his younger brothers Mozo and Gringo Toad because Thumbelina left him and "gave him the slip".
- The scene of both Grundel Toad and Berkeley Beetle bickering, with the former constantly abusing the latter (such as the former constantly beating up the latter and removing the latter's beetle wings) and the latter threatening to report the former to the Pond Patrol.
The ending was very nice due to the following reasons:
- After all the non-stop misery Thumbelina has been through throughout the entire film, she finally reunited with her love interest Prince Cornelius, marries him, and lived happily ever after.
- Thumbelina's mother and her fellow farm animals are invited to her daughter's wedding to Prince Cornelius, meaning that they still aren't forgotten from Thumbelina's life at all.
- The end credits reveal that all the characters in the film have a good ending, including the antagonists (such as Grundel Toad, Berkeley Beetle, and Mr. Mole, whom all three of them gave up on pursuing Thumbelina in the end) as well. Mr. Mole marries Ms. Fieldmouse, Berkeley Beetle regrew his beetle wings and returned to his normal popstar life, while Grundel Toad, the main antagonist, survived the fall but is injured with a broken leg and marries a female toad his age just like what Berkeley Beetle previously suggested to him near the film's climax much to his mother's delight.
It can be considered one of those so-bad-it's-good films.
At least it tried to give characters like Prince Cornelius and Thumbelina's mother bigger roles.
Don Bluth and Gary Goldman would eventually learn from their mistakes and, therefore, their next Disney-inspired princess film, Anastasia, which was released three years later, thankfully avoided all these problems this film had as listed above.

Reception

The movie was both a critical and commercial failure. The film currently holds a rating of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, although it did slightly better than other Bluth's other movies at the time, like Rock-a-Doodle and A Troll In Central Park.

Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, concluding his review "It is difficult to imagine anyone over the age of 12 finding much to enjoy in Thumbelina."

Awards and nominations

The song "Marry the Mole" won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song, making it the first animated film to be nominated for a Razzie in any category, as well as the only one at the time, until Eight Crazy Nights (2002) and The Emoji Movie (2017).

Trivia

There is a Thumbelina film from Soviet/Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm. It is from 1964 and is way better than this version.
Mrs. Toad is voiced and based on the famous Spanish singer: Charo.
Kenneth Mars, who is best known as the voice of King Triton from Disney's The Little Mermaid and Grandpa Longneck from The Land Before Time sequel media, provided the voice of Prince Cornelius' father King Colbert in this film. In a twist of irony, Mars voices the father-in-law of the female protagonist (Thumbelina) instead of the female protagonist (Ariel)'s biological father.
- Coincidentally, both the films The Little Mermaid and Thumbelina have a female lead who shares the exact same voice actress: Jodi Benson.
- Similarly, Gilbert Gottfried, who voices Berkeley Beetle in this film, previously provided the voice of Iago in Disney's Aladdin two years prior.
- Similarly, Tony Jay, who briefly voiced a bull in the musical number "Thumbelina" in this film, previously voiced Monsieur D'Arque, a minor antagonist in Disney's Beauty and the Beast three years prior, would later provide the voice of Judge Claude Frollo, the main antagonist of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame two years later and Shere Khan from The Jungle Book 2 7 years afterwards.
- Similarly, June Foray of the Looney Tunes fame voiced Queen Tabitha in this film. Coincidentally, both this film and Looney Tunes were a part of Warner Bros. back when the film was released. Foray would also later provide the voice of Grandmother Fa in Disney's Mulan four years later.