Why doesn't Thumbelina just use the bird to get home?
Jacquimo was too concerned with reuniting Thumbelina and Cornelius (via locating the Vale of the Fairies) to actually just take her home. She does ask him to do so several times, but he ignores her.
But then why doesn't he reunite them by flying Thumbelina to Cornelius, or flying her home and then flying him there? True, he wasn't sure where Cornelius was, but he could have let her ride while searching or dropped her off at home, then searched for him, then brought him to her home upon finding him.
Jacquimo strikes me as being too much of a romantic for that. He probably thinks it's more dramatic for him to find Cornelius first, so that he can swoop in on his bumblebee and save Thumbelina from whatever horrible predicament she's in. Jacquimo taking her home first or letting her come with him is boring, in comparison, and doesn't make for a better story.
Adaptation Induced Plothole. They wanted to introduce elements like the bird and the fairies a lot earlier so they felt less contrived and tacked on, but of course in Jaquimo's case this created a huge plot hole the movie had no way of dealing with. Although considering how absent-minded Jaquimo is portrayed, you could believe that he simply forgot he could fly her home.
Maybe Thumbelina is afraid of heights.
He does tell her to get on his back after she pulls the thorn from his wing so he can take her to the Vale of the Fairies, but Thumbs is too jaded and heartbroken about Cornelius being dead to have any faith in the idea, so Jacquimo takes off without her. Going off of that, he probably would've taken her home once winter set in, if he'd known where she was and hadn't been out cold the entire time.
Kind of shooting the message, Mrs. Toad
How come Mrs. Toad sings about why marriage sucks to get Thumbelina to marry her son?
Mrs. Toad's original intent was to get Thumbelina to join their singing group, which married life would allegedly have interfered with. Grundel didn't ask to marry her until the song was already over, and Mrs. Toad agreed to it since it would let them keep the money she earned in the family.
Fairy Wealth
Ignoring the fact that Thumbelina and Cornelius hardly knew each other, how the heck does the moral of marrying for love over money work? Cornelius is the fairy prince! Are we really to believe that he doesn't have enough money to support a family, or servants to raise the kids, or whatever else the arguments against him were?
She fell in love with him before she knew he was the fairy prince, and she seems to think of the prince less in terms of being rich than in terms of "who you're supposed to get together with in order to have a happy ending."
Plus, a fairy would probably not reckon wealth the same way as humans. Cornelius may have power, influence, and be rich in real possessions, but I doubt that he has much in the way of cash lying around.
Besides, Mrs. Fieldmouse at least made the argument after both she and Thumbelina had already taken Cornelius to be dead. Thumbs didn't have any plans to marry him after that, yet she was still against marrying the mole simply because she didn't love him.
WHAT is he singing?
At the part of Yer Beautiful Baby where the bugs are insulting Thumbelina, you can hear Beetle singing a second verse in the background. Anyone know what the words are? This is all I can make out:
Sometimes baby fire flies
A hornet’s fire flies [da-da-da]
Some may get up with [da da-da]
But what matters [da da da-da-da]
I beg to diff/cause you’re terrif!”
Even the soundtrack version masks them. What is the point of doing that?
On the Lilypad
Why did the toads drive off and leave Thumbelina on a lilypad when they wanted her to marry Grundel?
Because Andersen said so. No really, it's from the original story. The mother toad and son leave Thumbelina on the lily pad so they can fetch their relatives for the upcoming nupitals. Of course in the original they didn't have a giant boat they could've just kept her on. She escapes not by bird but thanks to some fish who take pity on her and nibble the lily pad free then push her to shore.
In the film, she says they're leaving her to go and fetch the "padre", or priest. My best guess is that they didn't want to chance her escaping if they brought her along. It was only thanks to a few good Samaritans that she was able to get off of the lilypad, after all.
Flying himself vs Riding a Bumblebee
Cornelius is a fairy. He has beautiful sparkling wings and uses them to fly Thumbelina around for what is implied to be at least a few minutes. Why on earth does he ride a bumblebee?
Why walk everywhere when you can ride a horse?
I always assumed it was the fairy equivalent of a motorcycle. Which makes the white butterfly the Queen gave him...I don't know, a Volkswagen Beetle or something.
Or maybe the butterfly is a Rolls-Royce, that's mostly intended to impress others with the owner's wealth. The sort of thing that would appeal more to Cornelius's slightly-snobbish mum than to Cornelius himself.
Bumblebees are extremely maneuverable in the air. Riding one may allow fairies to perform aerial maneuvers they couldn't do on their own.
He'd probably get tired pretty quickly and or he could only move so fast.
The Beetle Ball performance
The Beetle wanted Thumbelina at the Beetle Ball specifically to sing, because he was obsessed with her voice. Obsessed enough that he insisted she sing what she wanted to say instead of talk. Beetle then does all of the singing at the Beetle Ball, while Thumbleina smiled and danced in the background. Um... what gives?
Probably a narcissist.
Or they hadn't gotten to her part of the song before the costume came off and everyone started calling her ugly.
Aren't you gonna find me, Mom?
Did Thumbelina’s mother try going outside to look for her? We’re shown that she was never too far from the house the entire time — it only seemed like such an impossible distance because she’s so small and a little naive. But she probably would’ve heard her mother calling for if she’d even done it from her front porch, which would help her pinpoint where her home was.
As I recall, she was only shown to be a relatively short distance from her house before the Beetle showed up; it's possible that it took a while for the Jitterbugs to take her up to that point, and then the Beetle dragged her off in the wrong direction and she kept getting caught by someone else before she could find her way.
Is she good?
Seriously, is Thumbelina okay, because if you watch the movie she passes out like 5 times. Does she have some problem that keeps her from staying awake?
Does she really pass out that much, though? I can't think of any instances, despite having seen the movie several times.
She does after she almost goes over the waterfall on the lily pad. That's the most explicit time. But earlier, when Mrs. Toad kidnaps her, she wakes up and calls for help, only to be shown waking up again the next morning at the toads' houseboat. Maybe it's just a bad edit – maybe the kidnapping scene was originally written to have her sleep through it, and her waking up and calling for help was a last-minute change – but in-universe, the most logical explanation is that after calling for help, she fainted from fear. Later, she has yet another Waking Up Elsewhere scene after Miss Fieldmouse rescues her from the snow and brings her into her mouse hole. But in that case I think she had just fallen asleep, not passed out.
