The movie opens at this shitty looking amusement park called Pirate’s World (which was owned by Barry Mahon), where some random young woman (who’s also Thumbelina, so I’ll call her Main Girl when she’s seen in the park and Thumbelina when in the “main” story or some variation of it when I feel like it) is wandering the park, while some awful singer (I think it’s the same actress playing Thumbelina) goes on about what it would be like if she were Thumbelina. I was born in 1987, so by the time I was going to amusement parks there were way more safety regulations going on at them. So it’s always fun seeing these older movies and the days when people were blasĂ© about things like safety hazards. It’s no doubt why this place shut down in 1975.
While Main Girl walks around and plays on the rides we get opening credits(!?), even though we already had credits at the very beginning. This is one reason the Jack and the Beanstalk insert isn’t nearly as awkward, because it doesn’t have a second set of credits. The other reason it’s not as awkward I’ll will be explaining very soon. Main Girl eventuality goes into a fairy tale attraction (because you know, pirates!), which includes the classic story of Thumbelina by Hans Christian Anderson, who also wrote the Little Mermaid.
She goes to this shitty diorama, where a shitty voice on a shitty PA system starts narrating. This will be our narrator for the entirety of this, which is why it makes no sense within the narrative of the whole movie! When you give it even a few seconds of thought, you picture Santa describing this story as “Then the young woman went to stare at a diorama, while speaker system narrates Thumbelina.” Again, the filmmakers have no respect for children! There’s also clearly nothing happening inside the diorama, yet we see stuff happening inside a shitty soundstage (it’s really the only word I can use to describe these things). I’m guessing Main Girl is just high on something and hallucinating it all (it was the 70s after all) while the speaker box rambles on about the story.
There’s an old spinster (the narrator’s words, not mine!) who never got married or had kids and is in desperate want of a daughter. So she decides to see the local witch (as you do) to see if she knows any spells to create life (she does). But we have to sit through yet another fucking awful song, this one by the witch! In addition to the music, lyrics, and singing being awful (as if that wasn’t enough), there is almost no editing going on during this scene! Just a whole bunch long takes while the witch sings her stupid head off about the magic she can do. There’s also long spaces of just the music while the witch putters around and Spinster sits there waiting for it to be over.
Finally the witch stops her caterwauling and asks Spinster if she’s here to see her about defying the laws of nature (you just were singing a whole fucking song about it!), to which Spinster explains that she wants a daughter. Witch points out that Spinster is old (not the best thing to say to a potential customer!), but agrees to it and even declares that this daughter will one day be princess! And what’s the price for creating an abomination against God? Twelve pennies. I’m serious. All the witch wants is twelve fucking pennies in order to give her a seed to plant that will then grow a person! Then again, considering it only creates a 6inch tall person, it would probably cost significantly more for a person of average height. [I’m probably giving this way more thought than is needed for this thing…]
Thumbelina is born fully formed (as in she’s already a teen to young adult age, but still only a few inches tall), and even has clothes (saves the spinster on having to sew her something, so I guess that’s a bonus). Spinster takes this surprisingly well, I imagine most people would be kinda pissed that the child they wanted was so small you could step on them by accident. Then again, she didn’t have to spend a lot, so I guess there’s less disappointment involved. She also doesn’t have to buy an extra bed, half a walnut and a napkin for a blanket will work just fine!
Both seem happy for a while, but then one night Thumbelina is kidnapped (off camera) by a frog who wants her to marry her son. Spinster is sad by her loss, not enough to actually try looking for her (then again, she only cost 12 pennies, so she could easily get a new one). The frogs (along with the other animals) are people in horrifying costumes that I doubt even a furry would want to wear. Once again I feel so sorry for any kid that got dumped off at a theater and forced to watch this giant pile of shit!
Thumbelina escapes the frogs (off camera of course), and wanders around the forest, even interacting with a group of insect abominations. They make fun of her, calling her ugly (pot meet kettle!) and saying they should squish her (HAHA! Murder!), but then they just go away and that’s it. I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset, since we never see whatever the fuck those things are again after this. But I would also prefer to see Thumbelina gut them all and burn them!
Winter comes along and Thumbelina begins looking for shelter, then gets to stay at the home of Mrs. Mole (who’s also revealed to be the narrator). Spring comes along and she introduces Thumbelina to Mr. Digger, a neighboring mole (with a thick Brooklyn accent) who’s apparently wealthy from businessy business of investing business, and he immediately wants to marry Thumbelina! There’s also an injured bird (that looks like a giant piñata) in the mole tunnels that Thumbelina befriends, much to a chagrin of Mrs. Mole (who on more than one occasion spouts not so subtle racism towards other animals).
Bird eventually gets better and tells Thumbers he’s soon some people like her down south where he usually flies to, but lost track of the time. So he flies her there (and Mrs. Mole and Mr. Digger are just cool with it), where there are indeed tiny people like her, living in flowers. The prince of these flower folk says there was a prophecy of one their own coming from far away who would marry him and rule together (isn’t that a nice fucking coincidence!). Thumbelina says yes because he’s not some creepy old ass furry, and they all stand around singing the final horrific song.
Back at Pirate’s World, Mrs. Mole narrator speaker phone ends the story by saying Mr. Digger settled on marrying her (yay?) and Main Girl leaves the display. We end with her meeting up with some random guy (who may have also played the guy who played the prince, but it’s hard to tell due to poor picture quality and my lack of giving a shit) and this horrid story finally comes to an end! Wow was that awful! On to Jack and the Beanstalk.
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