Thumbelina is the romantic story of a girl who is born fully clothed and post-pubescent in a flower.
Born fully clothed with boobs? No, this isn't weird at all.
The woman who watered that flower is very excited and names the girl Thumbelina since she's the size of her thumb.
We're never told the old woman's name, but presumably it is "Cabinetina," since she comes from a culture where you name people after the things they are as tall as.
But before we meet Thumbelina, the bird narrator tells us that this is a love story, like Samson and Delilah or Romeo and Juliet.
This movie's attempts to be heartwarming are horrifying. First of all, Thumbelina hangs out with farm animals. Potentially hungry farm animals.
Because of a strong gust of goat breath, Thumbelina almost drowns.
She's only saved because a cow happened to be paying attention when she fell.
The animals don't learn their lesson and they breathe on her really hard again.
She falls down a black hole onto a nest of eggs. The fall could have killed her.
Then, she almost gets baked into a pie.
Thumbelina could easily be squashed between the pages of a book.
She is obviously a teenager, but her mother Cabinetina makes her sleep in a walnut in a cradle.
She also deprives Thumbelina of pajamas and makes her sleep in the shoes she was born in.
Soon, we meet the fairy prince, whose parents reinforce gender norms.
For the love story meet-cute, the fairy prince breaks into Thumbelina's room, vandalizes her book, and brandishes a weapon at her.
Too good for knocking, eh, prince?
After he introduces himself as Cornelius, Thumbelina figures it's OK to get onto a bumblebee with this guy who, to refresh, just broke into her room and waved a sword at her.
Cornelius flies around, holding wingless little Thumbelina, until he accidentally lets her fall literally as he's saying, "And I'll never let you fall."
Cornelius puts a ring on her left ring finger and asks her if she'll meet his parents. They met less than an hour ago. This doesn't faze her.
Despite the earlier breaking and entering, Thumbelina doesn't bother to close her window at night, and she gets kidnapped by a lady toad.
A lady toad voiced by Charo.
After she wakes up (somehow she manages to sleep even after being kidnapped in a walnut?), her kidnapper forces her to dance.
The male toad, who wants to marry her, is a racist caricature of a lecherous Latin man.
After they tell her she's going to marry a toad, they abandon tiny little Thumbelina on a lily pad. But she can't swim! She's trapped!
Jacquimo, our bird narrator, inserts himself into the story at this point and decides to free Thumbelina from the lily pad by snapping its stem, which sends her drifting toward a waterfall.
A guy called Mr. Beetle comes out of NOWHERE.
The heartbreaking part is that she was so close to her house that she would have been able to see it if she weren't so much shorter than all the grass around her.
He does creepy things, like rub mushrooms and caress Thumbelina's face with his antennae and kiss her arm even though she says, "I wish you wouldn't do that."
EEEEEEKKK!
Then, he kidnaps her, because that's what everyone seems to do!
The creepy beetle makes her dress up like a bug and dance in this bug club full of scary bugs.
Because of her fast-acting Stockholm syndrome, Thumbelina seems pretty happy about it. Mr. Beetle, who's voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, sings, "You're beautiful, baby!" She's (we think) 16!
Then, he spanks her with his cane onstage!
Poor Thumbelina.