An American Tail (1986)

• Year: 1986
• Released: 21 Nov 1986
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 1 Oscar. 6 wins & 7 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090633/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/An_American_Tail
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/an-american-tail
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: G
• Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
• Runtime: 80 min
• Writer: Judy Freudberg, Tony Geiss, David Kirschner
• Director: Don Bluth
• Cast: Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, Erica Yohn
• Keywords: new york city, cat, russia, mouse, immigration,

	6.9/10
	38/100
	73% – Critics
	71% – Audience

An American Tail Storyline

Fievel is a young Russian mouse separated from his parents on the way to America, a land they think is without cats. When he arrives alone in the New World, he keeps up hope, searching for his family, making new friends, and running and dodging the cats he thought he’d be rid off.

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An American Tail Movie Reviews

allusions and allegories

I think that I first saw “An American Tail” when I was about three. All that I interpreted was a bunch of scary-looking men on horses. Now that I’m old enough to understand the historical context, every part of the movie makes sense. The scary men on horses were cossacks carrying out pogroms against the Jews in tsarist Russia (in the movie, they bring cats to terrorize the mice). Thus, a family of Russian-Jewish mice immigrates to the United States in the belief that there are no cats in America. Meanwhile, a Sicilian mouse recounts the misdeeds of a feline mafioso, while an Irish mouse remembers the sad things that happened on the Emerald Isle.

Sure enough, there are cats in America. But much of what happens in the course of Fievel’s search for his family in New York seems to be a representation of the overall immigrant experience at the time. The immigrants are forced to work in sweatshops under the most dangerous conditions, and gangsters are the best hope for protection. Bridget’s calls for the mice to unite against the cats sounds like an allegory for labor organizing.

All in all, I recommend this movie. It was probably Don Bluth’s most creative movie ever, and certainly a credit to Steven Spielberg. I suspect that it was one of the first cartoon movies to cast movie stars (Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Plummer) as opposed to professional voice artists like Mel Blanc. Definitely worth seeing.

Also starring the voices of Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff*, Erica Yohn, John P. Finnegan, Pat Musick, Cathianne Blore, Neil Ross, Will Ryan and Hal Smith (Otis on “The Andy Griffith Show”).

*Nehemiah Persoff also starred in “Some Like It Hot”, and appeared on a “Gilligan’s Island” episode as a deposed Latin American dictator.

After Anastasia, American Tail is the best Don Bluth movie…

Not only that, but I think it’s the best pre-Little Mermaid animation of the 80s, Land Before Time being an extremely close contender, as I haven’t yet seen the Secret of Nimh. It tells the story of a little mouse named Fieval, who gets lost at sea, and his struggles to find his family. There is a vast difference to this and All Dogs Go To Heaven, and it is that American Tail is genuinely poignant, whereas All Dogs tends to be a little too morose, but don’t get me wrong, All Dogs is a very good movie, but I do prefer American Tail. Another difference is that although Warren T Rat is a convincing villain, I still think Carface is a little more convincing. The animation is stunning, as are the songs, my favourite being “Somewhere Out There”, which makes me cry every time I hear it. The incidental music and the script were also lovely.I have only two minor criticisms of this movie, which is that the story takes a while to get going, and I personally don’t think Phillip Glasser can sing(which I can forgive, as he was only 6 years old). The voice talents, as is usually the case in Don Bluth movies, are exceptional. Phillip Glasser is very sweet and even touching at times, and Dom DeLuise likewise. Christopher Plummer is very good as Henri, and Madeline Kahn delights with her character’s speech impediment. I cried at the end, and thank you Don Bluth for a heartfelt film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

needs more comedy

It’s 1885 Shostka, Russia. The Mousekewitzes are a Jewish mouse family suffering from attacks by Cossacks and cats. The father assures everyone that there are no cats in America. In Hamburg, Germany, the family boards a ship bound for America. Fievel falls overboard and is lost at sea. He survives in a bottle and arrives at the Statue of Liberty. He goes off to find his family who arrived in NYC assuming he’s dead.

Fievel needs a comedic sidekick. Tiger (Dom DeLuise) the cat comes closest to what the movie needs. Essentially he’s mostly by himself and that wears on the movie. It needs more fun and more joy. It has a great song in ‘Somewhere Out There’ but the movie has the characters sing it out of tune. It’s cute to start it off that way but I think it would be much better to build to a great Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram duet in that scene. The animation is nice but they have it grimy and smoggy for industrial NYC. It’s a nice animated movie tapping into the American immigrant lore.