Director Don Bluth is known for being an ex-Disney animator, and still making it big after his career with them. But no matter how good his career was, it still wasn't as good as with Disney, in animation and in writing. An American Tail is a clever idea for a movie, and could have been good, had it some sort of center or plot, other than just "Feivel the mouse is lost in 19th century New York."
The Mouskewitz family decides to migrate from Russia to America after a particularly bad attack from cats. On the boat ride there, Feivel falls overboard and ends up being picked up by a pigeon, in New York. Feivel travels the town, meets some interesting characters, and tries to find his parents, always assuming violin playing must be his father. Feivel ends up at an anti-cat rally (or a wowwey as they call it here), which leads to one of the stupidest climaxes I've ever seen in an animated film.
One thing that keeps this movie afloat, is some of the characters. Feivel is adorable, and I can see why people would be attracted to watch a movie with such a cute little protagonist. Tiger, voiced by Dom Deluise, is a pretty interesting character, as a vegetarian cat who'd rather befriend mice, than eat them. But the odd thing in the relationship between Feivel and Tiger is, why this grown cat is now great friends with this tiny little kid mouse, and how fast they become best friends. It was just a relationship that should've spanned more time to make more sense.
The animation is not great. It's really loose, and characters shapes change depending on the scene. Sometimes characters are enormously fat, next scene they could be just slightly fat, next scene they could have a huge head. The animation over emphasizes what the point of focus on the character is in a certain scene. For instance, One scene, a cat is supposed to look ferocious, it has a huge mouth with sharp teeth, next scene it's supposed to look nice, so it's stomach is out, because we all know fat cats are innocent.
It may sound as though I hated this movie, but I actually, sort of like it. It's cute, but flawed in many ways, and by the end grows boring. I actually much prefer the Don Bluth-less sequel, Feivel Goes West, for animation, music and writing in general.
My rating: ** 1/2 out of ****. 75 mins. G
The Mouskewitz family decides to migrate from Russia to America after a particularly bad attack from cats. On the boat ride there, Feivel falls overboard and ends up being picked up by a pigeon, in New York. Feivel travels the town, meets some interesting characters, and tries to find his parents, always assuming violin playing must be his father. Feivel ends up at an anti-cat rally (or a wowwey as they call it here), which leads to one of the stupidest climaxes I've ever seen in an animated film.
One thing that keeps this movie afloat, is some of the characters. Feivel is adorable, and I can see why people would be attracted to watch a movie with such a cute little protagonist. Tiger, voiced by Dom Deluise, is a pretty interesting character, as a vegetarian cat who'd rather befriend mice, than eat them. But the odd thing in the relationship between Feivel and Tiger is, why this grown cat is now great friends with this tiny little kid mouse, and how fast they become best friends. It was just a relationship that should've spanned more time to make more sense.
The animation is not great. It's really loose, and characters shapes change depending on the scene. Sometimes characters are enormously fat, next scene they could be just slightly fat, next scene they could have a huge head. The animation over emphasizes what the point of focus on the character is in a certain scene. For instance, One scene, a cat is supposed to look ferocious, it has a huge mouth with sharp teeth, next scene it's supposed to look nice, so it's stomach is out, because we all know fat cats are innocent.
It may sound as though I hated this movie, but I actually, sort of like it. It's cute, but flawed in many ways, and by the end grows boring. I actually much prefer the Don Bluth-less sequel, Feivel Goes West, for animation, music and writing in general.
My rating: ** 1/2 out of ****. 75 mins. G