AN AMERICAN TAIL (1986)

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF meets PINOCCHIO in the second animated feature from Don Bluth after he left Disney over quality issues.  And Bluth’s animation is often downright splendid, aspiring to Pre-War Disney level.  Not only the famous early features, but also in the playful abundance of early shorts like THE BAND CONCERT/’35.  What holds it back, as so often with Bluth, is story development.*  Little Fievel and the Mousekewitz family, ‘Pogrom’d’ out of Russia, get separated on their way to America and have to find each other.  But too many of Fievel’s on-the-road adventures play as distractions with songs that embellish character (and show a surprising nice tenor from Dom DeLuise), but stop the narrative.  (‘Somewhere Out There’ did became something of a standard.)  Plus a faceless army of bad cats where a single villain is needed.  About halfway thru, you wonder why use mice instead of humans?   For that matter, why animation?  You can spot much of what’s wrong simply by comparing the film to its poster (see above).  Someone in publicity knew exactly what producer Steven Spielberg was going for: the immigrant experience with a Chaplinesque Little Tramp figure always in danger of being trammeled by the Larger-than-Life competition.  Did Bluth not get the memo?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Sure enough, a classic Charlie Chaplin two-reeler, THE IMMIGRANT/’17, does the job to perfection.  OR: Disney’s take on Prokofiev’s kid-friendly concert piece, PETER AND THE WOLF, part of the MAKE MINE MUSIC/’46 omnibus feature.  It dumbs down the narration and ‘arranges’ the classic score, but the look of the animation is extraordinary, and extraordinarily Russian.  Might it have worked here?  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/make-mine-music-1946.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Listen up when ‘The Pledge of Allegiance’ is recited.  The sound fades just as they get to ‘One Nation, Under God . . .’   But that ‘Under God’ clause shouldn’t be in there, not part of ‘the pledge’ till the ‘50s when President Eisenhower let it in as a sop to the Right Wing/Anti-Commie crowd.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *As a Storyteller, Don Bluth is a great Animator.  While, as an Animator, Walt Disney was a great Storyteller.  (Strictly speaking, Story Editor.)  The diff being that Walt knew it and worked with the best Animators he could get, starting with Ub Iwerks.