Reflections on the “An American Tail“ Series

 

An American Tail turns 34 today. I have a long history with the first movie in particular. It was one of my favorite movies as a child. It's the reason I've always been into wearing hats. Perhaps even back then I was attracted to darker and depressing things, and An American Tail is a dark, depressing movie. A movie about a cute, innocent young Russian Jew mouse boy being thrown into a cruel world. No wonder I related to it. I like that it doesn’t sugar coat the world for kids. They could easily have made it some patriotic drivel that makes America out to be some kind of paradise. In fact the immigrant mice who are moving to America think it is going to be a paradise, but instead it turns out to be every bit as awful as the countries they came from, ruled by extortionists, full of sweatshops and gangs exploiting the working class immigrants. The metaphor that the movie operates on is that the mice are oppressed, and the cats are oppressors. No matter what country you go to anywhere, the cats are always there. Just like the oppressors are in every country. The song that the immigrants on the boat sing,  “There are No Cats in America”, turns out to have been a huge lie. Just like the American Dream. The movie tries to feign a happy ending; the mice of New York get rid of one cat gang. Just one. And Fievel finds his family. But there will be plenty of oppressors to take their place. Things may have worked out for Fievel in particular, but the world he lives in is still cruel and unjust. The sequels touch on this. Life doesn’t suddenly become easy.

The film spawned three sequels, which vary in quality but never quite approach the quality of the original. It’s a nice round number of movies; it didn’t overstay its welcome like The Land Before Time series, which is like 15 movies or something. There was a very short-lived TV series too called Fievel’s American Tails, but it is of such poor quality I didn’t feel like reviewing it right now. Some episodes were better than others, but overall the animation was abysmal and the plots didn’t follow the canon of the movies. You can see why it only lasted half a season before it was cancelled.

I did a review of each of the four movies a while back in the comments section on the An American Tail Fandom wiki (I miss calling it Wikia). I’ve got them here, and I’m going to expand on them for the blog. Anyway, pros and cons of the first film:

Pros

•    Top-notch animation by Don Bluth
•    Terrific voice acting
•    Enduring characters
•    Fun songs and a great orchestral soundtrack by James Horner.
•    Poignant message
•   Almost everything else not mentioned under cons.

Cons

•    The choppy plot, which jumps from scene to scene without much connecting it, obviously leaving parts of the story out due to budget restraints, is the biggest weakness of the movie.
•    It's short, adding to the above problem, where there's too much story to tell and not enough time to tell it.
•    The side characters could use more development; this is left for the sequels instead.

This movie is very sentimental to me, and it's hard to take the nostalgia goggles off and give it an honest critique. It's my favorite movie, and that's because its message has helped me in life when I feel like I'm facing impossible odds. I related to Fievel when I was a kid and he's become a symbol of my inner child. But I know that the movie isn't flawless. Still, it was the box office hit that reinvigorated the animation industry and made the animated movies that came later possible.

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Now on Laser Disc.

I have really mixed feelings about this movie. Don Bluth, who directed the first film, was not involved with the sequel. I didn’t like it as a kid, because it was too different from the first film. I don’t think I fully realized why I didn’t like it at the time, beyond the changed character designs. But I think it was the tone. It is light hearted, cheerful and comedic. It doesn’t have the depth of the first movie, neither an emotional depth nor an intellectual depth. It’s shallow entertainment. It does not respect the movie it is a sequel to, even mocking it when Fievel’s sister Tanya has a tomato thrown at her for singing the most popular song from the first movie, “Somewhere Out There”. As if to say “hey, we’re not going to be all sappy like that lame movie that came before us”. It’s a movie that wishes it weren’t a sequel and resents the movie that came before it. The only other example I can think of like this was when the Turtles Forever special was released, being a crossover between the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon and the 2003 reboot. It made the 1987 Turtles look like total idiots, because the people who made the special were of course the creators of the 2003 cartoon and must have hated being compared to the more famous original cartoon. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, but you can just feel the disdain the creators had for their predecessor. 

Fievel Goes West lacks any real historical authenticity unlike the first movie, and is more like an homage to Western movies. I doubt any child in the 1890s was as enamored with cowboys as was Fievel in this movie, who seems more like a kid from the 1950s in this who idolizes a Hollywood version of the wild west. Not so coincidentally this is likely when the writers of the movie grew up. Another sort of aside; it’s kind of funny how the older generation (I guess baby boomers) tried to push cowboys on kids in the 90s a few times because it was what they liked as kids, but it never really caught on. Toy Story was going for that too, as well as that crappy Cowboys of Moo Mesa cartoon that I wish I had done a better job repressing the memory of. On the adult side of things you had a few movies like Back to the Future III and Tombstone  trying to bring the genre back. I didn’t like cowboys as a kid, and there are only a couple Western movies I like to this day. I guess it’s just a genre that’s fading into the past, and has been since the 1980s or so. It couldn’t be resuscitated by the 1990s, despite some attempts.

 For a while in my early adulthood, which was when I reacquainted myself with this series, I was a bit more forgiving of Fievel Goes West, because by then I appreciated good animation. And it does have really good animation. But in the time since then, I think I’ve gone back to mostly disliking it again, for reasons I have discussed. I don’t completely hate it, but, here are my pros and cons. 

Pros

•   Most of the voice actors returned.
•   Gorgeous animation, you might even argue better animation than the first film.
•   Cathy Cavadini as Tanya, and her singing.
•   More focus on the secondary characters.
•   Tiger's scenes are sometimes amusing.
•   Cat R. Waul is a good villain thanks to John Cleese's performance, even more memorable than Warren.

Cons

•   Its commitment to being "lighter and softer" than the first movie makes it go out of its way to avoid ever being sad or dark, to the point where the Mousekewitz family isn't even worried when they lose Fievel this time. 
•   Tony and Bridget are relegated to brief cameos.
•   Fievel being able to turn his hat inside out into a cowboy hat. I mean, what?
•   Tanya getting tomatoes thrown at her for singing "Somewhere Out There". We get it, writers, you hate the first movie.
•   The movie seems really rushed and short, even though they had five years to work on it.
•    The very cringeworthy racist scene with Native American mice. As well as a song celebrating Manifest Destiny. It was 1991, they should have known better by then. 

As you can probably tell I prefer the first film, but I'm willing to admit there are some aspects of this film that are better. It's the best-produced of the An American Tail sequels, if only from a technical and artistic standpoint. 

An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island

People piss on this movie all the time because it was low budget and direct to video, and has a line near the beginning where Fievel says he had a dream that he moved out west, thus implying the last movie was just a dream. The movie takes place in New York rather than in the west and indeed acts like the previous movie never happened. Some say it’s supposed to take place before Fievel Goes West, but I don’t really think that’s true. The two movies clearly didn’t take place in the same universe. Too many inconsistencies. Well you know what? Good riddance to Fievel Goes West anyway. This movie may not have the best animation, but it’s still closer in tone to the first film. I think it’s a better sequel. I mean judging both movies separately based solely on their own merits, maybe Fievel Goes West is better as an overall movie. Maybe. But Treasure of Manhattan Island still does a better job of being an actual sequel to An American Tail. It isn’t shallow entertainment like the previous installment. It has emotional depth, it’s historical, and it tackles complex social issues.

So the overall plot has to do with Fievel and friends finding this map that leads them to a hidden underground tribe of Native American mice who went into hiding when the Europeans brought their cats over. They try to bring the chief’s daughter Cholena to the surface to show her Europeans have changed and become more tolerant, but they discover that Europeans certainly have NOT become more tolerant.  The portrayal of Native Americans in this film may not be perfect but it’s a hundred times better than their portrayal in Fievel Goes West, where they’re treated like a joke. I mean I’m no Native American myself so I’m no authority on it and maybe my opinion isn’t worth much, but it seems to me they were at least trying to be respectful to Native Americans in this movie. It’s not my place to say if they succeeded or not. There’s also a subplot where Fievel’s father is working at a cheese factory that is basically a sweat shop, and the evil CEOs decide to force their workers to invade the underground cave of the Native Americans so they can plunder their supposed treasure by stirring them into a paranoid racist panic. They even have the police on their payroll, and there is an unsettling scene of brutality when one of the employees questions their motives, shown in shadow. Eventually the three villainous bosses are defeated when Fievel’s father starts a workers union; just as it would have been in real life, the villains don’t truly get any karma in this film, they just now have to pay their workers more fairly and not turn them into their private army. It’s probably the most leftist movie I’ve ever seen, and it’s amazing Universal Studios let this one slip under their radar with its pro-union message. 

But you can see the real world themes here carry over from the first film. Granted the cats aren’t the oppressors in this one, just mice oppressing other mice. But in real life, the Irish for example may have been oppressed for a while in the United States, but later on they were just considered white and may have owned sweatshops themselves. Maybe that is what is being alluded to here. At any rate, Fievel Goes West was too shallow to adhere to any kind of symbolism. 

Pros

•   Most of the voice actors returned.
•   Tony Toponi is back; one of my favorite characters, who was absent from the previous film except in split-second background cameos.
•   Tanya's characterization as the snarky older sister is good for some laughs.
•   Compelling story with relevant social commentary, not afraid to deal with difficult subject matter.
•   “Anywhere in Your Dreams” is a pretty decent song, keeping the tradition of “Award Bait Songs” in the franchise.

Cons

•   Doesn't follow continuity; potentially retcons the second movie (but then again maybe this is a pro)
•   Bridget, Tony’s girlfriend in the first movie, is missing. She was a prominent enough character that her absence is a bit jarring. Maybe she and Tony broke up, who knows.
•   The animation doesn't hold up to the first two movies
•   Most of the music (besides “Anywhere in Your Dreams”) is bad.
•   While the villains are especially evil, they lack the charisma of either Warren or Waul. It seems O'Bloat was an attempt to make them sillier (sort of the role Digit plays in the first film) but he's never funny. 

In short, it's not exactly that good, but it could have been worse and I still get some enjoyment from it.

An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster

I can’t really gush over the final movie in the franchise. It it exists somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd movies in terms of tone; more light-hearted, comedic and tame than Treasure of Manhattan Island, but more serious than Fievel Goes West. The animation is just a little bit worse than the previous installment, which itself wasn’t that good. It is completely self-contained. The previous film occasionally referenced the first film, but this one never does. The movie doesn’t really end up being about Fievel but about a new character, Nellie Brie, based on the infamous undercover reporter Nelly Bly (cheese puns are everywhere in these movies). Nellie Brie is assigned to this news story about a “monster” abducting mice, but she’s almost more of a detective than a reporter, and she starts unraveling the mystery behind this monster. She finds out the monster is just a robot operated by an evil French poodle and her cat minions, probably the silliest and least threatening of the An American Tail villains. It’s an okay movie. Just mediocre. Even Fievel Goes West at least gets a reaction out of me, but this film is overall rather unremarkable. However, I liked Nellie Brie as a character enough that she’s a main character in my old An American Tail/The Great Mouse Detective crossover fan fictions. But since the plot is so bland and Scooby-Doo-esque her character isn’t really enough to save the movie or make it as good as the previous sequels. They should have put her in a better story. 

Pros

•  Most of the voice actors returned.
•   Tony Toponi is back again; and he sings this time and it’s hilarious.
•   Nellie Brie is an interesting character with a good voice actress, and based on a compelling historical figure.
•   The songs are for the most part better than The Treasure of Manhattan Island
•   Madame Mousey, while still not quite up to Warren or Waul's standards, is the kind of silly yet at least somewhat threatening villain the series needs.

Cons

•   Bridget is still missing
•   The animation doesn't hold up to the first two movies, nor is it even as good as the third movie's.
•   The story itself is kind of strange for a An American Tail movie, doesn't fit in with the other three that much.
•   Fievel is out of character, being made timid and afraid when he was always brave to the point that it got him into trouble in every other movie.
•   No continuity; at least a mention of the events in any of the other movies would be nice.

It's a pretty mediocre film, not great but not terrible either. Nellie Brie kind of makes the movie for me, had she been a weaker character the movie would have fallen apart.

An American Tail: Warp That Aesop 

 The website TV Tropes has a game called “Warp that Aesop”, where you look for bad messages in media; and if none can be found, you twist the good messages into bad ones. It’s great fun, I have been participating for years. I did some “warped aesops” for all four An American Tail movies some time ago, and will go ahead and reprint them here. Here are some of the not-so-good lessons the movies teach.

• An American Tail:
  • Cats only eat meat because they're mean. They could live off vegetables if they really wanted to.
  • We should deport every criminal gang in America to Hong Kong.
    • The best solution to crime is to send criminals to another country and let it become their problem.
  • It's good to make kids disillusioned with America at an early age.
  • Never give up and you'll accomplish your goals, but only after being driven to near-suicidal depression first.
  • America is just as awful as whatever country you might be thinking of moving there from. Don’t immigrate there.
• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West:
  • Hey, young girls! Don't show any personal ambition, or you'll be lying to yourself and ignoring family members in need!
  • Dancing with the man who's plotting to kill your family and everyone you know is romantic.
  • Hey guys! If your girlfriend dumps you because of who you are, you should change your entire personality (maybe even your species) to suit her fancy so she'll take you back!
    • Be yourself, unless your true self sucks.
  • The song "Way Out West": Hooray for Manifest Destiny! Move out west, it's not like it was populated before we Europeans got here.
  • Native Americans practice silly religions and will start worshiping you if you resemble a random rock they live near.
• An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island:
  • Save for a handful of good ones, Europeans are unable to co-exist with any other race besides their own, and the best solution to this is segregation.
  • It is possible to have a dream as complex as a feature length movie and a 13-episode series.
  • It's good to shame kids about the misdeeds of their ancestors at an early age. If the atrocities occurred before their ancestors even immigrated to the area, they should be shamed anyway.
• An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster:
  • Foreigners are silly and delusional, and will easily mistaken any poorly-made robotic contraption for a monstrous figure from their silly and false mythologies.
  • Forcing a scared child to interview families of people who've reportedly been eaten by some unidentified monster and draw an artist's interpretation of the creature is a great way to help them overcome their fears.