Free With Ads - The Secret of NIMH

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

This week we decided to watch another classic Don Bluth cartoon about attractive mice. We all watched The Secret of NIMH, a fantasy children's movie about a single mom trying to get medicine for her sick son. Tune in next week when our movie will be... The Bodyguard. ----- THE STINGTONES ARE HERE! Please click this link and enjoy our library of stings. Come see Jordan June 6-7 at TCAF the Toronto Comics Art Festival You should buy Predator: Bloodshed and do so at Bookshop.org! The Predator: Bloodshed collection is coming out on Nov 24th. Be sure to pre-order it here at Bookshop.org. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinfreewithads

Hey everyone, producer Matt Lieb here. Just wanted to let you know before we get started on this wonderful episode of Free With Ads. I wanted to let everyone know that we have kept our promise. The Stingtones are now available for anyone to download. That's right. All of the wonderful little stings that I've been creating over these past two glorious years of Free With Ads. they are now available on a little Google Drive. So there is a link in the description of this episode. Go ahead and click that and enjoy. Listen to the cute little sting tones. Listen to the stings.

You can set it as your ringtone or you can just have them in case you just want to hear fingering story over and over again. Whatever you're into, no judgment. So everyone please. enjoy the sting tones, and thank you to everyone who joined maximum fun.org and supported our show, as well as this network. We really appreciate it, and we hope you enjoy the stings, and we hope you enjoy this episode of Free With Ads. This is Free With Ads, the podcast that asked the question, why pay Disney plus 12 bucks a month to show your kids a bunch of animated classics when you can go online for free and show them the, the films of Don Bluth, and then get them a big glass of Mr. Pib and a handful of Hydrocks.

I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Emily Fleming. Today's movie is The Secret of Nim, the 80s animated classic that features a hunky mouse. So sexy, he makes that Robin Hood Fox look like a huge pile of shit. With us, as always, is the super producer, The He Freak, Matt Leave, hitting us with those anthropomorphic drops. Come inside or go away. That was an audio of my wife when we were trying to conceive. Well, hey, if you need to finish up, I got a sexy mouse you can think about.

He's in this movie. Who's naked sometimes. Oh, you know, I'm talking about the mouse I'm talking about is the like Royal Guard guy. Yeah, that hot mouse. Yeah. But you're right, that female mouse, Miss Brisbane, a little bit of a milf, if you ask me. Mouse I'd like to friend. Well, like all of these mice have full-on clothes on.

Yeah. And she just has this little cape and she wakes up nude. She's just naked-ass mouse, dude. I sure. So she's wearing the cape for most of the movie. And you're right. In the select scenes where she's not wearing the cape, it feels scandalous. It does.

She's naked. Is that her pussy? Can I see her pussy? Is that our little mouse muff? A little mouse muff? Man, what's wrong with us? I don't know. We've watched so many movies with mice.

I realize that Don Bluth just does a lot of mice. He just wants to fuck a mouse, which I'm like, I get. I get it. Hey, man. Because, yeah, we haven't done like American Tale or Fifell Goes West yet, which I can't wait. But like, if you think about it, okay, we got, what was the last? Rockadoodle. There's cute mice.

Chicken. Yeah. And that one mouse. Yeah, that mouse with the big glasses. She was fuckable. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And then Thumbolina. Thumbolina got a fucking mouse, too. So it's like. Yeah, we're starting to like find some of Don Bluth's themes. Yeah, he has a kink. This is, you know, this is his Tarantino feet. You know what I mean? Tarantino's got feet.

Don Bluth has mice. Mice. Yeah. Well, I kind of looked. up because these mice did look a lot like American tail mice. I was like, is there like a crossover or an Easter egg? Nope. Nope. There is not.

Is there a Bluthiverse? I'm sure they did the thing though where they used like the same like animations like over and over again. That's like Disney used to do that all the time. Yeah, sure. So I'm certain that's the reason for so many fuckable mice.

I'm sure there's a Bluth YouTuber out there. A bluthtober. A bluthuber. Bluthuber. YouTube's over. I'm all about Bluth tube. It's a bluth streaming service. It's got seven movies. Well, hey, we're going to talk more about the secret of NIM, but first, we're going to talk about something else we saw for free on the internet this week.

So in our Predator episode from a few weeks back, we challenged you. you are beautiful, wonderful listeners to create your own predator memes for the show. Of course, the predator meme, which you might not know is from the movie until you see it, is the popular meme template

with the two buff hands clasping in the middle. And, you know, one hand says a thing, the other hand says another thing, and in the middle is something they can agree on. Yeah, it would be like Tarantino, Don Bluth, then in the middle would say making movies clearly showing their kinks to the world. Matt, that's pretty good. That is very good.

Just an example. My examples that I gave, one hand free with ads, one hand flute teachers, and in the middle, talking about fingering. Nice, nice, nice. And of course, free with ads and Thomas J. from my girl. And in the middle, collecting stings. Oh, I like that. I didn't even know that was the name of the character. He died from Beast.

IP McCulley. Where's his glasses? Where you can't see without his glasses. Fun fact, those glasses later used in Rockadoodle for that little mouse I want to fuck. Oh, wow. That's fun. That's a fun little bit of movie trivia. I love a fun fact.

Yes, I'm just going to read some submissions from our wonderful listeners. These, of course, are posted over on R-Slas Maximum Fun and R-Sash free with ads. Sergeant Pepper 21 did Jordan, Emily, and Matt shaking hands with everyone else and in the middle, horny for Sam Elliott. Hell, yes. 1976 Curler did Event Horizon, shaking hands with Harry and the Hendersons

and in the middle traumatizing Emily. Let's see. I love that. Ock pay-sizers did theater nerds, shaking hands with horny weirdos. the middle free with ads. Yes. Probably true.

This is great. You guys killed it. Oh, here we go. Taskmaster of puppets did I Love Lucy, shaking hands with free with ads and in the middle hot red heads. Yeah, I think we know who they're talking about. Yeah. That's me.

I got it. With your famous flaming locks. If you look very closely at my mustache, you will see a few ginger spices. Yeah, ginger spices. Yeah. Actually, I have noticed that. Yeah, now they're gray. I am now gray.

Well, good beards on this show. Good beards, good beards. And one final one from thin white rogue. We have free with ad, shaking hands with geologists studying boulders, and in the middle watching hunks. Aw. I like that. I like that. That's wonderful.

Thank y'all. And we love it when you post about the show over there on R slash Maximum fun. Thank you for doing that. Oh, and you know, I wanted to shout out another Rediter real quick. And listen, I know that sometimes I warn, you know, Emily about maybe spending too much time over there

on Reddit. There's, you know, I just, I worry about people's mental health, but there are. Listen, any, anybody, you know, and I say this because I've gone too far down the hole and made myself. feel bad. But there is a great

poster over there on R slash free with ads. This is Dan Mott man and he is taking every issue of Predator Bloodshed and doing all the stings for it so he's treating it like a movie

and he's doing the worst hat and the tallest guy and who would play and stuff like that. So thank you to Dan Mottman for checking out those comics and for doing the post.

Very, fun and creative. Nice to have fans. So you know what? The Reddit's good. I take my, I take back every bad thing I've said about it. It might be the one good community on Reddit.

Maybe it is. I don't know. The rest of, I mean, it's also because we haven't reached our critical mass of fans yet. At some point, we'll, right,

our podcast will be so popular that our Reddit will. The fandom will become toxic. Yeah, become toxic, which is, oh, I hope we get that out. Oh, please destroy us. Say I used to listen to you back when you were normal.

Say it. I did read one and I'm on mood stabilizers so pretty much nothing can hurt me. That's wonderful. Thank you. It's great. You're a magic amulet like the mouse from this film. Seriously. But I did read one about like whose movie taste you most associate with.

Ain't one of them said me. Oh. Well, that's not a lot of hackers. fans in the audience. No, but you know what? I get it. I think that makes me an individual. I think it does too.

I think it does too. You don't go with a crowd. That's right. So see, when you're on mood stabilizers, you can think about things that are clearly an insult and spin it in a positive way. I mean, this is the perfect time to go on Reddit. LaMictal, good stuff. Yeah.

Okay. Well, hey, let's talk about the secret of NIM. I, despite having watched a lot of Bluth as a kid, I had never seen this one. Had y'all seen it going into this? No. And I thought, I got this confused with Watership Down. I thought that there's another traumatizing kind of movie.

Rodent movie. And I knew this was like the bleakest Don Bluth. That's what everybody said. So, but I knew the necklace. I knew the images and stuff, but, and I may have like half ass watched it at some point. But boy, I didn't remember. anything while watching it except for that necklace be ugly. Oh.

There's no heart of the sea, that's for sure. That's exactly right. And it's no yellow diamond necklace from How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. Sure. Of course not. I'm going to rake jewelry for sure. Oh, yeah. Best jewelry in this.

Can there be a sting called jewelry talk? Of course there can be. Sure. It's a sting for anything. There's three syllables. Exactly. And even so even if there's not, I can still make it work.

You squeeze it in. Yeah, Matt's, Matt's very creative. I'm very good at my job. I know, I had never seen this. I thought maybe I had because it was, you know, I just know it so well in terms of, like, visually. And my conclusion, because I've been sexually attracted to that mouse since I was a child. Not in like a weird way, not in the same way I was sexually attracted to being eaten by an Anaconda, but the, you know, or like quicksand, right?

You know, but when you're young, you don't know what horny is, you just are. But anyways, the mouse, though, was always like, I don't know, an early base memory I had of, like, being like, oh, that mouse is kind of hot. I think I just saw the VHS cover over and over again, like at Friends houses. or at video rental stores and just assumed that I had seen it or would see it, I have never seen this fucking thing. And I tell you, I still don't know what it's about. I know.

It's like 15 movies in one movie. Jordan, I don't know how you figured out a summary for this to follow. Yeah, I was thinking that too. I was like, you know, maybe this is my ADHD or something. That's what I kept thinking during it. I was like, I hope Jordan is. neurotypical because I am not able to follow this. Well, no, but I didn't, you know, that's interesting.

None of us are. I, I, you know, something that I've noticed kind of rewatching these bluths as we've done for this show is like they're heavy on vibes, but they don't make a ton of sense, right? Like he's just kind of like he's maybe a little more into just like cool set pieces and how can we kind of string it together with a little story and sometimes like it doesn't matter how we get from one area to another. Yeah. I watched this and this is pretty crazy and goes to a lot of weird places, but I was like,

I think this makes the most sense out of any Don Bluth. Huh. Okay. Maybe like, maybe like land before time is pretty clear A to B and, you know, maybe I tend to think that's because like Spielberg and George Lucas were producers on it. So maybe they're like, hey, Bluth, maybe let's try to give this a story that kids can follow. Yeah, let's keep it simple. Yeah, exactly.

There's probably a mouse in that to begin with. I bet. Well, there aren't mice. What if it's about ancient mice? All right, Bluze. Oh, come on, there's mice. We're mice in the time of the dinosaur. And that's what kids want to see a movie about.

I'll make, I'll make duckie fuckable, fine. All jokes, by the way, for those out there who are. going, that's a minor. I know, it's a dinosaur cartoon. I'm kidding. Also, they aren't real. Yes. So they aren't real.

Evolution is not real. In case you guys did it know. We all know, as my Christian neighbors told me as a kid, that dinosaurs were made up to make money for the museum industry. Oh, I love that. That's a great theory.

All those museums raking in. What an adorable? right-wing conspiracy theory. Yeah. That's the cutest one. Big oil, big steel, big museum. These are the three huge industry. Which are like publicly fun.

I know. Yeah. Like what a fucking cuck. Like just say there's dinosaurs. It's fine. It doesn't mean there's just. Just say they're in the Bible. That's what people do now.

They just say. Yeah. They put them on the fucking arc if you want to do that. Well, guess what? I actually asked Rhett about this because they are, you know, former like expert. Well, they're also pretty expert Bible. Retta.

Retting. Good Mythical Morning before they became YouTube guys were like set out to be youth pastors. Yeah, like evangelical entertainers. But they're also just very, they're like scholars of the Bible. I guess there's reference to dragons somewhere in the people. And so people thought that dinosaurs were like were the dragon. So they thought humans did exist in the time of the dinosaurs. in the Garden of Eden.

I feel like I saw in Jesus camp or one of these like, you know, evangelical Christian documentaries, there's something called the behemoth in the Bible, and they're saying that whatever that is is a dinosaur. So maybe that's what the dragon is. That might be what he was saying. I forgot how Red explained it, but he was like, yeah, it's in the Bible.

There was a guy with an acoustic guitar singing about how the behemoth is a dinosaur. That was like the name of the song, I remember. And I was like, okay. So I'm glad that. They figured out a way to retcon the Bible. But yeah, there's like evangelical museums, the enemy of the right wing. The Cabazon dinosaurs, which are the big kind of fiberglass dinosaurs you see in Pee Wee's Big Adventure that are out here in kind of Southern California. That it was just a, you know, roadside stand to advertise a barbecue restaurant when they built them.

But then some evangelical young earth wackos. bought it. And so I went to it when it was a young Earth museum and just it's so fucking crazy and all this shit about Noah taking them on the ark and like, you know, cave people doing paintings of dinosaurs and stuff like that. Anyway, it has since been bought by right thinking people. And now it's just a regular dinosaur museum. But there was a little pocket where it was a young earth whack-a-doodle show and I got to visit and it was a real blast but I am glad

that now it contains facts that is crazy I did not know that at all I visited them too oh nice did you see it do you think you went to it when it was cucky and religious or it was just like in 2020 I went

oh I think it maybe it had figured it was normal again yeah I like I didn't see anything that looked kind of Christian forward This is probably normal again now. Maybe. Or maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough and I just went, ooh, rocks. Like I didn't, in the gift shop.

I was like, ah. Cool. Ancient rocks. Anyway, Secret of NIM. It starts out with perhaps the sweetest words in the free with ad language, a Don Bluth production. The only sweeter words directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. That's right.

We get a bunch of cryptic lore stuff with a mysterious character writing in a magic book. No one draws wordy hands better than Don Bluth. Sorry to interrupt. Just had to. Nope, no, they're great.

And these are some great Don Bluth hands. And yeah, all this kind of like wizardy magic stuff is really, really cool looking. There's a shot where you can kind of see the, the, you know, person or whatever who's writing in the book. You can see their reflection in the amulet,

and that's like a very cool, already shot. But, you know, he's just saying a bunch of cryptic stuff. He says, farewell, my friend, to someone named Jonathan. And then we go to F. Farm where a bunch of cute anthropomorphic mice are crawling around on a big, very sinister-looking farm machine that's just, like, covered in random spikes. Whoever designed this farm machine also designed the spaceship from a vet horizon. It's just random spikes, real dangerous.

This is Mrs. I wrote down Brisbane, but I think it's Frisbee. I thought it was Brisbane. I think it's... Yeah, it's Brisbane. I turned on the closed captions for... Okay, I think it's Brisbane. Maybe in the... Maybe I think I googled the books,

and it's called Miss Frisbee in the rats of them anyway. That's a good change. Right, because it sounds like something you take to the beach. Sure. It's based on a book. It's Miss Brisbane in the movie version of Secret of Nets. Let's say, we'll go with Brisbane. It's Brisbane.

I mean, it's... So it is based on a book. I wonder if the book is this fucking crazy. I wonder. Yeah. So, yeah, so this is Mrs. Brisbane. She's our main character. She's talking to Mr. Agis, and she's talking about, who's another mouse?

Okay. The mice in this name all have generic people names. They're like Jonathan and Jeremy. Justin. There's a Justin later. There is it, Justin. Very weird. Anyway, she's talked to Mr. Agis.

She says her son, her son is sick. Her son, little Billy, is sick. So he takes her to a, like, laboratory. It's also seen very event horizon to me. I'm like, is this guy trying to build a portal to hell? That's a, I want to see that movie. There is some portal to hell, like, supernatural stuff in this movie. Don Bluth loves a portal to hell.

Oh, Bluth love. He loves cartoons in hell. It's, I mean, it's pretty sick. Yeah, there's always a devil that's like a dog devil. He was a dog devil. I was a dog devil. So yeah, so he's, so he's building, he's building something in there. He makes a little medicine potion for the kid's son.

We meet a silly Billy Bird voiced by Dom Deloise, who is like so fucking good at like cookie cartoon characters. He doesn't change his voice. It's just great. He did all dogs go to heaven. He's itchy, yeah. Was he, am I, who am I thinking of? Was he, who played the Seagull? in Little Mermaid.

Oh. Was that not him as well? It's probably not. Buddy Hackett. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another fucking just great, great voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's a silly crow who will pop up

voiced by Dom Deloese. Kind of hits on the mouse later. It's a little weird. Anyway, so he's making a love nest. He's gathering like strings to make a love nest, but he can't find a bird to settle down with. we get a warning about a cat, a villainous cat. This is fucking Bluth also hates cats.

I guess if you love and want to fuck mice, you hate cats. That makes a lot of sense. There are no cats in America. Right? Thank you. That's straight up. I think that is a, you know, cruel racist. All dogs go to heaven.

All dogs? I know. Who goes to hell? Yeah, what the hell is with that? Oh, I have to tell you guys something. Cats are angels. I also just watched the Aristocats. Oh, yeah.

That slaps. But Jenna Purdy, friend of mine, also mythical from Good Mythical Morning, just got a kitten that she found on the side of the road. I think I've been seeing this little guy on Instagram. I went to visit my sweet nephew. It's named A.B. I can't remember why, but I call him Bubba. Oh, Bubba.

Oh my God, I can't. Maybe I'll share some pictures on the gram. Please do. Jesus, it's so fucking cute. Love a kitten. Yeah. What is the, there's the Reddit, the cat delivery service or the cat distribution system. It's kind of the theory that like cats will just find you and that the universe will just give you a cat.

What happened to her, she was like traveling. And so she had to rent a car to drive back from like, I can't remember where they were somewhere in the south. but so she drove like a couple of days with this kitten to bring you back to L.A. Well, Don Bluth, wrong on cat. In general, I think we're fans, but his cat position we just cannot support. Right on fuckable mice. Wrong on cat. Oh, 100%.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like Trump. Guys not right on about everything. Yeah, exactly. You can't be right all the time. You can't be right. You can't be right. Oh, Died, I hop out.

Horrible minds. Anyway. So, yeah, there's this mean cat named dragon who's kind of like lurking around. So, yeah, so the little, Mrs. Brisbane goes back to her kind of mouse house. She talks about the kid's aunt is taking care of them. It's a shrew, kind of a funny. Hated her. Oh, he didn't like her.

Didn't like the shrew. She was mean to the kids. She's just one of those. I mean, she's a great character, just like one of those. in your business, like constantly complaining, but has like, you know, deep down a good heart. She wants the little mice kids to be safe, but she also wants them to be little seen, not heard. And I think there's a little bit of racism going on at some point. Sure.

You mean against mice? No, against the crow. Oh, yeah, there is a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't catch that explicitly. Oh, yeah.

Well, her just has. For certain, she is, she's bigoted. She is a bigoted. She's very bigoted, yeah. I mean, she's a shrew. What are you going to do? Then we cannot, we cannot support this shrew, no matter how funny her little voice is. Then, okay, this is kind of where it starts to get bluthy in that it becomes a little bit harder to follow what's going on.

This is when we cut to the humans in this world. We're basically 30 minutes in, and then we're like, okay, and now there's, some human characters. I think they're the tallest people in the movie, obviously. Tallest guy. And they're talking to each other about the National Institute of Mental Health, NIM. And they're talking about how the National Institute of Mental Health is calling around about rats, about rats acting weird.

And so we get that little thing, and then we don't do anything. with it for a while, but it's this weird little crumb that they drop that confuses you. I missed this. I missed it too. I didn't know what NIM was. I just kind of went, okay. I waited for most of the movie.

I'm going, what the fuck is NIM? Okay, so this thing, yeah, so NIM is a human organization. It's the National Institute of Mental Health. It's like it's from a fucking Stephen King thing. Yeah. The kind of weird genre stuff going on in this I, like, really, really liked. Sure. Anyway, but you get this thing and you're like, what the fuck's going on?

Why are there people? Anyway. All right. That makes sense. Now I've put all the pieces together. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, this is, so we go back to Mrs. Brisbane.

She wakes up, no cape, pussy fully out. Straight up. Just so. Mootty. So hot. Mouse tits. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And she's single. And she's, uh, same. Single mommy. These kids need a new daddy. And that's me. I'll raise the mice children. Oh, my God. What are we?

I don't know. What are we? You're just, you want a son at all costs. That's right. Get three mouse children. A mouse son. Must have son. Must have sick mouse son.

Gotta get it. So we find out that there's a ticking clock going on. There is a tractor a common. They live in a farmer's field. the tractor's coming, but we can't move the kid because he's too sick. He's got pneumonia, which is like, I thought maybe he was, it was going to be this specific kind of like scarlet fever, I don't know, kind of thing. I was like pneumonia.

Like, come on, kid. I think you can hang. But also, you know, it can be bad, but it is kind of funny for it. It is like, it can be bad, I know, but it's just kind of shocking for all this drama of this movie to be a kid with pneumonia. But I know pneumonia kills and it's bad. But also the fact that the tractor's coming and everything, I felt a little bad because you guys know I worked at this The Bone Store, which it was called Necromance and it was

a natural history slash oddities store. And we made earrings and jewelry out of prairie dog feet. And they would come to us in a big package from a farmer who like once a year had to blow up the prairie dogs because they make holes in the, you know, in the ground. And then the cows will break their ankles and stuff. And it's bad. So they, once a year, they cull all the prairie dogs, which are like, they're rodents. So I'm kind of, and then I get all these feet in the mail, and I'd have to match them up by size to put them on ear.

What a job. I know. I was really good at it. to make it in L.A. There's something a Tim Burton character. Yeah, straight up. And I mean, well, I've told you the bat story how I got high on formaldehyde. But like, yeah, so I felt kind of bad.

I was like, oh, no, these are the little things I made jewelry out of. Exactly, exactly. You know who would be mad at you? Who? Harry, from Harry and the Henderson. Oh, I know. He would be very mad. Yes, that's true.

Just crush your head like a melon. It would be a fun. Funny, like, whoever makes those R-rated Winnie the Pooh movies, they should do an R-rated Harry in the Henderson's when he enters the public domain. Right. He just notices the family has a much of taxidermy and then just rips all their faces off. Yeah. Kills him.

Or do the movie exactly shot for shot beat for beat the exact same way. But then in the scene where Lithgow is like, get out of here, he just kills him. Yeah. He just kills John Lithgow. family because he you know he hits him sure oh yeah he just rips him in half yeah just rips him in half and it's like oh shit i should have like an adolescent chimp yeah turns on its own exactly yeah two many he's all zanied out anyways right secret of nil what happened call us hollywood yes call we got ideas we have so many great ideas they are their ideas uh they are their ideas uh so we have to like

figure out how to move the family. So they say to go, there's like a wise old owl who lives in a creepy tree. This is, this section of the movie is pretty much like the ever-ending stories. Just go see this guy, go see this guy. Lots of quests. So they go see an owl who's like very cool looking. He's got a cool-looking creepy tree. He doesn't really do anything other than to tell her to go see someone else.

She goes to see the rats of the rats who live. live in the rose bush. Yeah. He does. I have one clip from the owl in which he just says. Why have you come? Which,

because I saw a fuckable mouse. Yeah. That's me answering that question, owl. Well, one thing the owl does do is let us know about Jonathan,

her dead husband. I assume that they're dead. And so he gives a little, you know, he's like, oh, you're the wife of Jonathan. Well, okay, I'll help you kind of thing.

So you're like, who the fuck is Jonathan? and we will find out. Yeah. So, yeah, everybody she meets, like, at some point mentions Jonathan. Yeah, she's another just normal-ass guy name that they give to this mouse. So, yeah, so they go in the rose bush and they say, ask for Nicodemus. And I'm like, finally, a fantasy name for this.

I'm like, good, he's not just Charles or something like that. Ask for Greg. Yeah. Greg, the wizard mouse. Doug will show you the way. Do you think it's kind of based. on the name Nostradamus, like, or something? Like, maybe, I was thinking, I was thinking Nicoderm, you know, that's what you're trying.

Yeah, that was on your mind. Yeah, I was like, oh, no, I need a Nicodermus. It's an Old Testament Bible name, Nicodemus. Oh, okay. Turned his wife into salt or something. Oh, all right. I know that's a lot. Don't, don't at me Bible, Bible creeps.

Yeah, Bible weirdos. Bible weirdos. So, yeah, so they go into the bush. It's also really creepy and cool looking. They get chased by this kind of rat. guard who has this kind of crazy electrical fantasy weapon. That's really neat. That's like a fun chase scene that doesn't have much to do with the story overall, but is very cool.

And so, yeah, so that's, and so the guy, whatever this dude's name is, Mr. Agis is in there. And he shows her around the bush, and that's when we kind of meet Justin the guard mouse, who is very Disney Robin Hood. Oh, yeah. And a good voice, too. His voice is sexy. Great voice. Yeah. Whoever's doing this VO performance.

It's fucking perfect. The VO performances are, like Don Bluth in general, I think has some of my favorite VO performances. Yeah, they're great. He's great with actors. Because they're not over the top. Like even, you know, Don DeLuiz in this, he's got the silliest character. And he's not going over the top with it.

Yeah. But everyone else pretty much has like this, I don't know. It's like a, the cadence is very human and it's, and it's everyone's kind of softer spoken. There's something about it that's like, it's like an ASMR thing. It is. But this is also, I think, probably the most serious like Don Bleuth. Sure. Other than Land Before Time, but I'd say this is even more serious.

Yeah, yeah. But this is, I mean, it's got a lot. Yeah. I mean, this one, this is a good portion of this movie is just people going, oh, hi, Miss Brisbane. Sorry about your dead husband. Right. There's a lot of like your husband who is dead. That one, the dead one.

It's very sad. But yeah, the voices just very soothing. Even the hot ones. That's just in the mouse. Oh, also the Dom Deloese crow is named Jeremy. No. What is with the J names? Guy ass name.

Anyway. So then we also just get this weird little lore drop that we didn't know about until now that there is a rat name. named Jenner, who is consumed by a lust for power. So we have just, okay, Jenner's out there somewhere, who you've not met yet. At this point, have they done the exposition about what is going on? No. Okay, all right, yeah.

We're almost there. We're almost to kind of to the what's going on, like an hour into this kid's movie. Right, right. Yeah, so we meet the Rat Council. There's one of them that's wearing a powdered wig. that's really funny, but I think it probably qualifies as the worst hat. Yay! The worst hat.

Very nice. We learned from the Rat Council that the NIM rats have been stealing electricity from the farmers, and that's kind of like the big issue in their society is do we steal electricity or do we become independent? Again, this has dropped on us very late in the movie, but apparently it's like tearing the rat society apart. And Jenner is the big like, let's steal electricity guy and all the other rats are like, we can't steal. Anyway, that doesn't really go anywhere. Doesn't matter. That there's a fight going on within a rat society.

I guess that it's supposed to be like these rats are moral and good, I guess. Right. And yeah, and I think, you know, Jenner is very much a Carl Weathers from Predator. He's like a succeeded at any cost. It doesn't matter. Like, you just have to survive. And then, you know, the other rats are kind of like we have to look out for each other. Right.

So, you know, these are big, fun, universe. themes meanwhile I'm watching this going um miss brisbee's son needs medicine can we yeah I know can we just look after the sun for a bit yeah we figure out what's going on this far didn't she just need medicine you know they need to move him though they need to find a way to move them without him being exposed to the open air because open air will kill him I guess I thought that when you're sick A little bit of air is a good thing But maybe not a fear of mouse

Not if you're a mouse hard to say Different for mice might be different for mice Yeah, we meet Nicodemus He's the sorcerer from the beginning Who's saying all the cryptic stuff We learn that Jonathan Brisby's Mrs. Brisbane's husband So Jonathan Brisby

Just a mouse with a first and last name She doesn't even have a first name Oh yeah I think they just call her Mrs. Brisby the whole time Interesting. So we learned that he died while trying to drug the farmer's cat. Again, our hero was trying to kill a cat, so that makes him a hero. Not, not.

But he also, like, kind of helps a bunch of rats escape something and mice. Because they, there's the messed up, I know that this was like a traumatizing movie for some. And the most traumatizing part is the nym, like that instant. Institute was experimenting. So we get the reveal of like why anything is happening. So we get this big huge lore dump from Nicodemus. So NIM is a experiment facility. I think it's going under the National Institute of Mental Health.

And they were, it's a crazy animal lab, rats, mice. We got some monkeys in there. We got some dogs, very, very cute animals that they're doing experiments on. and the rats of NIM mutated and became super smart and then could read. And I'm like, we have all this sci-fi shit they're dumping on us now. This is awesome. That's when I'm like, oh, I love. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's like the Stephen King Firestarter shit.

It's like they experimented on these rats. They're out. And now they're looking for them. They don't get into that at all. But apparently the NIM organization knows that they're superpowered shit out there and they're trying to get it. I am like, do I need to read all these books? Oh, is there a bunch?

Is it a series? Yeah, there's three or four. And I'm like, I kind of want to, yeah, it being so weird and unexpected like this really kicked it up for me. I like started paying attention more. Yeah, but the other thing is like, is, was the experiments the reason why they have like one with magical powers and a magical amulet? Are they so smart that they are able to use magic?

Right. Or is the magic science? Like are they, you know, I kind of like that element to it too. They think it's magic, but maybe like they're giving them X-Men hours. Right. The amulet is just crack like. Yeah. Yeah. They're just really high. Yeah. They're all just like twitching in their cages while the story is going on. What I found, interesting about this part. And I wasn't sure how to feel about it. I was like on the one hand, I feel you, Jordan. There's something. exciting about like, oh, that's a cool origin story about like, you know, these Meister super intelligent. On the other hand, I'm watching, you know, one of, you know, hundreds of cartoons in which the, there are anthropomorphic animals who talk. I'm expecting animals to talk in cartoons. The fact that they now go, oh, this is why they can talk is very strange to me because I've never seen a, I think, a cartoon where they needed a reason. Like, here's why, here's why Mickey Mouse says hi and works a job on a steamboat.

It's like, it's usually just like, I don't know, it's just, it's a cartoon. It's cartoon. Yeah. But can they read? Well, right. I guess that's the thing is they're reading. But also, they're putting on clothes now. There is something like, you know, as soon as they're able to read, they're like, oh, cover up those mouse tits.

Sure. They can read the Bible and then they learn shame. Right. Leave the mouse pussy out. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Okay, so yeah, we're kind of like, we're almost at like kind of act three here.

We get this big reveal. Why don't we take a break and then come back for some more. Hey, we're back. It's Free With Ads. We're going to talk about the end of The Secret of Nim. So we have learned that all these mice and rats are superpowered experiments. Although I guess Mrs. Brisby wasn't. So I guess she's just a mouse that.

Anyway, but can talk and wear clothes. I don't know. She got it rubbed off on her with her husband's cum. That's right. You can get superpowers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone knows that you get superpowers from come. I must be the best.

I must have superpowers more than anyone else. Emily can fly. She can turn invisible. Proportional speed and strength of a spider. I'm Jean Grey as the Phoenix. All of them, all of them. Yeah, this is where you get the Phoenix force. Yep.

So, okay, so the thing that's going to happen is that they're going to move the Brisbane's entire house. So that's the plan. All the mites are going to do it. And then, oh, Jenner is going to do his evil plan where he is going to sabotage the house move and use it to kill Nicodemus. So anyway. And the house is in a cinder block. Yeah, they live in a cinder block. so they have to like move this cinder block.

So Mrs. Brisbee goes to like do do the job that her husband couldn't. The job that killed her husband. She goes to like, but poison the cat, which again, I can't get on board with. The cat's just listening. Did it seem like they needed to because the cat was lazy as fuck? Like the cat wanted to go in. The cat was going inside. They're going to kill it in its house.

It's in the house. You don't need to kill anyway. I agree. I think that was insane. The rats of nym are the villains of. this movie. Dragon the one-eyed cat is a hero. We have no choice but to stand.

We must stand. We stand. So she's kind of doing this thing where the little kid puts her in a cage and she's trying to get out and kill the cat. While the other rats of NIM are like hoisting the house with a police system. Jenner has this little lagoon who comes with him, who ends up being very important to the story. who's like, no, don't do it, don't do it.

Jenner cuts the ropes. It squashes Nicodemus. The little sword fight with Justin. Hot, hot, hot. Hot. I mean, he can work the sword. Oh, my gosh. But then, you know, we think that it's over for them, but then the buddy is like,

Jenner's random buddy gets a conscious and throws a knife and kills him. Yeah. But the house falls on Nicodemus. Like a high boss. body count for the end of this thing. No kidding. I'm trying to remember if any other Don Bluth movies have someone getting murdered. I mean, I guess all dogs go to heaven.

Yeah. The mafia dog gets eaten by the alligator. You know, that's the mafia dog gets eaten by the alligator. There is some murder in these. A T-Rex kills, you know, Lil' foots mom. That's true. But that's just animal instincts, though. That's true.

Is that murder or is that just the circle of life? Yeah, this is rat on rat crime. That's true. Yeah. It's fucked up. For food. They're just doing it because the love of the love of blood. That's right.

So then we get this kind of big sequence where the house is crashed but is going underwater. And so all the kids are kind of trying to swim out. This is fucking great Bluth here. It's just so cool. He does such a great chase sequence. He does a great race against time. and then the thing that we all expected to happen, the amulet that Jonathan told Nicodemus to give to Mrs. Brisbane gives her the force,

you know, and then she uses force powers or Phoenix powers to lift the house out of the water and move it to the thing. And they don't really talk about what happened or why or what the ammust. meal it was or why anything happened. That's a nice little hurry it up moment for the movie. Would you say that's a Deus X Machina, like kind of thing? Yeah, sure it is. Yeah. I mean, it's, um, and then it makes you go, why weren't we using this all the time? Yep. Um, and yeah, Jonathan, if you know that the necklace has the force,

he just wrote a little riddle on the back, like the key to unlock the strongest door. What are we doing? Say it has the force. Yeah, say it has the force. You can use it to kill. I don't know You want to kill the, I don't want them to kill the cap. If you need to, you could just force crush it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Feels like a bonehead move by a dead husband. Yeah.

Classic dead husband. Classic dead husband. So, you know, they move the house. The Dom Deloese Crow meets the real sexy lady crow and they like go off. That was cute. Fly off with the little rope together. I'm wondering if that is actually how like crows. Well, they like do this thing where they, um,

fly like in little loops where they like cross each other oh really i think that might actually be how they kind of i love that if that's a flirt kind of a mating a mating dance i love crows crows ravens those are those are my those are remember things yeah smart smart they talk they're awesome uh well yeah that is the end of the secret of nym now it's time i mean this whole episode's kind of been the hunk watch but now we'll officially do the hunk watch yeah it's hunk watch any any I mean

you know Justin obviously it's Justin for me cartoon legend anybody else still worth talking about it's Miss it's Miss Brisbane Miss Brisbane I mean like I said this is a core childhood memory

fuckable mouse I've been attracted to those that type of proportion you know ever since And sexy cape, like... Sexy cape, yeah, sometimes naked. Yeah.

You know, just everything about it is just like... And Justin and her didn't even kiss at the end. I was like, they're clearly equally attractive. They should be kissing, but... Same chemistry. Yeah, single mom. Come on. Works too hard. Loves her kids.

He probably doesn't want to be a stepdad. She really is... Yeah, yeah. She might be a fuck boy. That's true. But this really is like that Riba song goes in there. I think I'm going to use... Which Reba song?

The single mom who works too hard and loves her kids and never stops. Oh, yeah. I don't know much about Reba, but that sounds about right. Yeah. Hell yeah. Who do you want to fuck, Jordan? Oh, yeah. Well, like, okay.

Is there anybody other than Justin that's worth talking about? Maybe not really. No, that's yours. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. Cartoon mom was kind of hot. Yeah.

She's here for a couple minutes, Cartoon mom pretty hot. When she's yelling at the cat about how late. How lazy it is. So that's true. Would not work out between me and cartoon. Yeah, I don't think you guys is going to long. I mean, the crow is like not hot, which explains why it took him so long to find.

I know. He's desperate. Maybe like crow, by crow standards. By crow standards, might be pretty good. The old, what do you call it, owl, he's pretty hot too in like a in a darn way. Yeah. kind of a creepy, scary, crackling with strange energy kind of play. Yeah, just imagine him doming you saying things like,

Why have you come? You know, when you haven't, he hasn't given you permission yet. Don Bluth or Dom Bluth, right? Dom Deloise is in this. You could say something about that, I guess, whatever. Well, tell your kids about this podcast. Yeah, fun podcast to listen to, to get ideas for movies to watch with kids. Yes.

All right, well, that's the Hunk Watch. We're going to rank the movie when we come back. We're back. It's Free With Ads. We're going to tell you what we thought of The Secret of Nim. But first, we want to remind you about our bonus episodes. That's right, we like shows. It is our bonus series for MaxFund members where we talk about the TV we love.

Matt. You picked the show. for this month's we like shows. That's right. What did you pick and why? I chose Downton Abbey. Downabby, one of my all-time favorite series about a lovely, you know, the house about a beautiful, large estate. It is a beautiful house.

The house is great. In which the, you know, the aristocrats live above and the servants live below and everyone's British. And it's, and it opens with the Titanic sinking. So it is a fantastic little soap opera period piece from the BBC that everyone should watch because it's so good. And yeah, Emily, you had never seen Downton Abbey despite being a real costume drama. I know. And I'm excited. It's, it's my grandmother loves it and loved it.

I mean, grandmother's everywhere. She loves it in heaven now. So, you know. I'm just watching in heaven The Downton Abbey seasons are 30 episodes long Yeah that's right

There's so many misunderstandings regarding snuffboxes The snuffbox related Misunderstatings on numerous How dare you It's a great show There's a snuff box related plot line I bet there is

Season one Yes Anyway Maximumfund.org slash join That's where you go to join Max Fun and that's how you hear

Our bonus episodes and all the bonus episodes on the network, I should say. So tons and tons of bonus stuff for supporting the show. And, of course, we got some merch for you, maxfunstore.com. We got hats that say the worst hat. We got T-shirts, stickers, handsome pint glasses, all kinds of good stuff. Maxfundstore.com. Okay.

Why don't we rank the Rats of NIM? Excuse me, the secret of NIM. Rets NIM, I think it's the name of the book. Anyway. The Secret of NIM. of one to ten super loud commercials. Matt, as the one with the most strongest core memories throughout this movie you had never seen, what did you think? One to ten. I'm very sweaty. So I'm going to give this, I'm going to give this a five. I thought it was, it was a little bit hard to follow and I found that my tastes have moved on from fuckable mice. So it, it, you know,

wasn't a movie in which I was incredibly horny, which is not, you're into the minions now. Yeah, now I'm a minions guy. I like their weird little fake Spanish language. But,

no, I mean, you know, it was, for me, I, for some reason, maybe it was the way I was watching it

or something, but it was the Don Booth that was the hardest to follow for me. So I would not relish watching it again. But I, I would say that it It had its moments, especially aesthetically, that I found really amazing and kind of wish I'd

been able to follow it a little bit better. But yeah, I love the voice acting. I love the way the animals look. I'm giving it a solid five. Yeah, right. Emily, what do you think? I agree with Matt that the voice acting is absolutely superb. That's great.

And all of Don Blu's animation always looks. It looks beautiful, and I find that, like, the physicality of the characters just looks more, it looks prettier than a Disney movie. Yeah, he's so great with, like, motion. And I think that's why those chase sequences are so good. Oh, yeah, for sure. You can tell, like, the stuff he cares about. Yeah, it's the bleakest Don Bluth I've seen so far. I didn't find it to be a fun watch because it's kind of like scary and sad.

But, yeah, I'm going to give it a six just because of the, um, the, the crime. Craftsmanship, Master craftsmanship of making this movie is so gorgeous, but I don't want to watch it again. Maybe I'll come out the, I think maybe I liked this the most. I think I'm going to go seven. I think if I, like, the Land Before Time is the Bluth. We watch the most as kids, so that one to me will always be Bluth Goat. But I think this is a better movie. Wow.

And yeah, I kind of like all the weirdo, sci-fi stuff in it. And yeah, it's so fun to look at. Yeah, I think, you know, if you're an adult with no kids in the room, it's maybe not something to run to. But I think this would be a fun watch with kids, you know, if they have a high tolerance for terror and sadness. Like the millennials were when we were kids. They just made us scared as shit all the time. Yeah, make your kids into little millennials. Make them into little girl bosses by freaking them out with a cartoon.

Yeah, I like this a lot. I think it will be interesting maybe when we've. I've done all of these to do bluth power rankings. This might be my favorite bluth. I don't know. All right. Let's do a little plug-in. Anybody got anything?

I'm about to launch my own YouTube channel. Hey, okay. This is news. Tell us more. Yeah, it's going to be called The Anticraft, and it is some fun arts and crafts things that I don't know how to do, but you will watch me struggle through it.

And maybe we'll learn something together, or maybe we'll just see me get very frustrated. I don't know. But it'll be coming out in July. So keep your eyes out for it. We'll put it in the show notes, of course. And one day I hope that these two gentlemen will be guests on the show and makes a thing with me. Yay!

I just rented an art studio. So I'm like going to be making it in there. I'm really excited. Oh, that's awesome. Check it out. If you are listening to this the week it comes out and you live in the tarant. Toronto, Canada area. You can come see me at T-Cath,

the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. That is at 50 Carleton Street. That is fucking free. No excuse not to get your ass down to 50 Carleton Street. If you are in Toronto, come see me. I'm signing comics, hanging out, doing stuff. A really, really fun show. I hope you'll come out.

And yeah, speaking of comics, Predator Bloodshed. Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Versity. It's all out there on shelves at your local comic book store. Please get it. And yeah, definitely check out the recaps over on our slash free with ads. All right. Tune in next week when our movie will be The Bodyguard.

Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.