An American Tail

I watched this maybe once when I was at the demographic age and even though I remember certain details I don't feel a deep nostalgic attachment to this story of Fievel Mousekowitz's perilous journey through New York after being separated from his family. It's actually incredibly good, thanks to joyful musical numbers, a thoughtful sense of humour, valid nuanced political subtext, warmth and the willingness to display dark situations providing they service a story make it completely understandable why the film rivalled contemporary Disney releases (though I do love this and Great Mouse Detective equally). I almost wish Fievel sounded Russian- the fact he sounds American takes away slightly from the idea he's new in the country which is a pretty key plotpoint and it would've given the film more of an identity if they'd done this, especially since his parents sound russian and there are so many other accents on display like Italian Irish and German.

Has anyone else watched it recently? Is it your favourite Don Bluth movie and if not which one is? might be Secret of Nimh for me. I really do reccomend it if you can find it- I bought the digital version on amazon because I really got the urge to revisit
I recently made a video on it, no one's obligated to watch of course and I already made a lot of the points here but it's available if anyone happens to be interested

(video- I make similar points in the post below so there's no need to watch but here it is for anyone who wants slightly more detail/interesting presentation )

I watched this maybe once when I was at the demographic age and even though I remember certain details I don't feel a deep nostalgic attachment to this story of Fievel Mousekowitz's perilous journey through New York after being separated from his family. It's actually incredibly good, thanks to joyful musical numbers, a thoughtful sense of humour, valid nuanced political subtext, warmth and the willingness to display dark situations providing they service a story make it completely understandable why the film rivalled contemporary Disney releases (though I do love this and Great Mouse Detective equally). I almost wish Fievel sounded Russian- the fact he sounds American takes away slightly from the idea he's new in the country which is a pretty key plotpoint and it would've given the film more of an identity if they'd done this.

Has anyone else watched it recently? I really do reccomend it if you can find it- I bought the digital version on amazon because I really got the urge to revisit

Wikipedia says the city is in present day northeast Ukraine.

And I'd like to add asking did these events spur mass immigration to the United States like the movie depicts the mice of the area are doing? Or any sort of mass Jewish immigration?

And is it related to spurring mass immigration from wider Europe because there is some sort of related worldwide historical event going on? An Italian mouse is on the ship when the main characters immigrate to America.

From wikipedia-

In , , in the winter of , the Mousekewitzes, a family of mice who live with a human family named Moskowitz, are having a celebration of where Papa gives his hat to his 7-year-old son, Fievel, and tells him about the United States, a country in which he believes there are no cats. The celebration is interrupted when a battery of ride through the village square in an arson attack and their cats attack the village mice. Because of this, the Moskowitz home, along with that of the Mousekewitzes, is destroyed, while Fievel has a narrow escape from the cats. They flee the village in search of a better life.

I always am fascinated with movies that have interesting behind-the-scenes histories behind them, and in the case of this movie, it’s chock full of it: It was Stephen Spielberg’s first foray into the world of animation, introducing him to both the oddities and hardships behind it (including a huge union issue that went on during production). Because of this, Stephen would later go on to find his short-lived animation studio, Amblimation, before going onto Dreamworks. This movie’s also one of the the reasons why one of my favorite graphic novels of all time, , was initially published in a two volume format, as Mr. Spiegelman didn’t want to release it afterwards in fear that people would mistaken it for a bad parody. The union issues ended up helping him by the time Maus 1 was published.

I swear, alongside “The Great Mouse Detective”, 1986 was a big year for mice, for some reason.

Now, as for the movie itself, I personally hadn’t watched it since I was really really little. Watching it as an adult, I actually thought it was a lot better than I would’ve expected! The animation has that awesome 80’s Don Bluth aesthetic, James Horner’s score is pretty good, and Dom Deluise, as always, did a great job in this. I even really liked the relation between the movie’s plot and the common experiences of immigrants coming to pre-WW1 America.

Of course, there were things I wasn’t big into. The singing... Well, I’d really hate to be hard on the inexperienced child actors, especially since they were probably already intimidated with doing a whole damn movie at a strange recording booth.

I did think some of the characters (especially Tony) were either a little annoying or even unnecessary, though.

With that said, it’s a pretty good film. I’d say if your a big animation, history or Don Bluth buff, I’d highly recommend it.