An American Tail
Encyclopedia
An American Tail is a 1986 American animated adventure film directed by Don Bluth
and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios
and Amblin Entertainment
. The film tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family as they immigrate from Russia to America for freedom. However, Fievel gets lost and must find a way to help his family. The film was released on November 21, 1986.
, Russia
, the Mousekewitzes — a Russian-Jewish family of mice — decide to immigrate to the United States
after an army of cruel cats that belong to the Cossacks (a reference to actual pogroms occurring in Russia at the time
) destroy their village. During the trip overseas, the family's young son, Fievel, gets separated from the others and washes overboard in a storm. They arrive sadly in America, believing they've lost their son.
Fievel, however, floats to America in a bottle, and after a pep talk from a French pigeon named Henri, embarks on a quest to find his family. He is waylaid by conman Warren T. Rat, who gains his trust and then sells him to a sweatshop. He escapes with Tony, a street-smart Italian mouse, and they join up with Bridget, an Irish mouse trying to rouse her fellow mice to stand up to cats. When a gang of some called the Mott Street Maulers attacks a mouse marketplace, the immigrant mice learn that the tales of a no-cat country is not true.
Bridget takes Fievel and Tony to see Honest John, a drunk (but reliable) politician who knows all the voting mice in New York City. But as the Mousekewitzes have not yet registered to vote, he can't help Fievel find them. Meanwhile, his sister, Tanya, tells her gloomy parents she has a feeling that he is still alive, but they urged her that the feeling would soon go away.
Led by the rich and powerful Gussie Mausheimer, the mice hold a rally to decide what to do about the cats. Warren T. Rat is extorting them all for protection that he never provides. No one has any idea what to do about it, until Fievel whispers a plan to Gussie.
The mice take over an abandoned building on Chelsea Pier and begin constructing their plan. On the day of launch, Fievel gets lost and stumbles upon Warren T.'s lair. He discovers that he is actually a cat in disguise and the leader of the Maulers. They capture Fievel, but a goofy, soft-hearted orange cat named Tiger takes a liking to him and sets him free.
Fievel races back to the pier with the cats in hot pursuit when Gussie orders the mice to release the secret weapon. A huge mechanical mouse, inspired by the bedtime tales Papa told to Fievel of the "Giant Mouse of Minsk", chases the cats down the pier and into the water. A tramp steamer bound for Hong Kong
picks them up and carries them away.
During the battle, Fievel is once again separated from those he loves and falls into despair when a group of orphans tell him that he should have given up a long time ago. Papa Mouskewitz overhears Bridget and Tony calling out to Fievel, but is sure that there may be another "Fievel" somewhere, until he sees Mama picking up his son's hat. They team up for a final effort to find him, and in the end, Papa's violin playing leads Fievel back into the arms of his family. The journey ends with Henri taking everyone to see his newly completed project — the Statue of Liberty
, and the Mouskewitzes' new life in America begins.
technique, in which sequences were shot in live action and then traced onto animation cels. This provides a realistic look for human characters, and distinguishes the cartoonish animal characters from the more realistically animated humans. Rotoscoping is frequently employed in Don Bluth films, including The Secret of NIMH
and Anastasia
.
. The song "Somewhere Out There
", composed by Horner and written by Barry Mann
, won a Grammy Award
. One scene incorporates the John Phillip Sousa march Stars and Stripes Forever.
(also released in 1986 but four months earlier) by over $22 million USD. It would later be outgrossed by the next Bluth film, 1988's The Land Before Time
, which marginally outperformed Oliver and Company. The record would quickly be shattered with the release of The Little Mermaid
three years later.
, with a Spanish
dubbed version separately released on VHS as Un cuento americano (An American Tale, dropping the pun inherent in the English title), and is now available on a DVD that contains the main English track, as well as dubbing for French and Spanish.
Currently, An American Tail has a "B" rating at Box Office Mojo
. After years of its Rotten Tomatoes
score going back and forth between "fresh" and "rotten", it has managed to settle above the line at 63%. Its score among the website "community" is more secure at 84%.
The staff of Halliwell's Film Guide gave it one star out of four. "[This] expensive cartoon feature," they wrote, "[has] not much in the way of narrative interest or indeed humor."
American Film Institute
Lists
(1991), the television series Fievel's American Tails
, and two direct-to-video sequels: An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island
and An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster
, none of which Don Bluth had any involvement with.
Fievel later served as the mascot
for Steven Spielberg
's Amblimation
animation studio, appearing in its production logo
. Also, as reported on the official An American Tail website, Fievel has become the mascot for UNICEF as well. There is also a Fievel-themed playground at Universal Studios Florida
, featuring a large water slide and many over-sized objects such as books, glasses, cowboy boots, and more. It is the only such playground at any of NBC Universal
's theme parks.
suspected Spielberg of plagiarism due to the fact the Jews are depicted as mice in An American Tail just as in Spiegelman's earlier Maus
, a metaphor Spiegelman had adopted from Nazi propaganda. Instead of pursuing copyright litigation, Spiegelman opted to beat the movie's release date by convincing his publishers to split Maus into two volumes and publish the first before he even finished the second.
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios
Sullivan Bluth Studios
Sullivan Bluth Studios was an American animated film production company established in 1985 by animator Don Bluth. Bluth and several colleagues, all of whom were former Disney animators, left Disney in 1979 to form Don Bluth Productions, later known as the Bluth Group...
and Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
. The film tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family as they immigrate from Russia to America for freedom. However, Fievel gets lost and must find a way to help his family. The film was released on November 21, 1986.
Plot
In 1885 ShostkaShostka
Shostka is a town in Sumy Oblast in north-east of Ukraine. The population is 85,800 . The town lies on the river Shostka, a tributary of Desna, from which it gets its name...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the Mousekewitzes — a Russian-Jewish family of mice — decide to immigrate to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after an army of cruel cats that belong to the Cossacks (a reference to actual pogroms occurring in Russia at the time
Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed...
) destroy their village. During the trip overseas, the family's young son, Fievel, gets separated from the others and washes overboard in a storm. They arrive sadly in America, believing they've lost their son.
Fievel, however, floats to America in a bottle, and after a pep talk from a French pigeon named Henri, embarks on a quest to find his family. He is waylaid by conman Warren T. Rat, who gains his trust and then sells him to a sweatshop. He escapes with Tony, a street-smart Italian mouse, and they join up with Bridget, an Irish mouse trying to rouse her fellow mice to stand up to cats. When a gang of some called the Mott Street Maulers attacks a mouse marketplace, the immigrant mice learn that the tales of a no-cat country is not true.
Bridget takes Fievel and Tony to see Honest John, a drunk (but reliable) politician who knows all the voting mice in New York City. But as the Mousekewitzes have not yet registered to vote, he can't help Fievel find them. Meanwhile, his sister, Tanya, tells her gloomy parents she has a feeling that he is still alive, but they urged her that the feeling would soon go away.
Led by the rich and powerful Gussie Mausheimer, the mice hold a rally to decide what to do about the cats. Warren T. Rat is extorting them all for protection that he never provides. No one has any idea what to do about it, until Fievel whispers a plan to Gussie.
The mice take over an abandoned building on Chelsea Pier and begin constructing their plan. On the day of launch, Fievel gets lost and stumbles upon Warren T.'s lair. He discovers that he is actually a cat in disguise and the leader of the Maulers. They capture Fievel, but a goofy, soft-hearted orange cat named Tiger takes a liking to him and sets him free.
Fievel races back to the pier with the cats in hot pursuit when Gussie orders the mice to release the secret weapon. A huge mechanical mouse, inspired by the bedtime tales Papa told to Fievel of the "Giant Mouse of Minsk", chases the cats down the pier and into the water. A tramp steamer bound for Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
picks them up and carries them away.
During the battle, Fievel is once again separated from those he loves and falls into despair when a group of orphans tell him that he should have given up a long time ago. Papa Mouskewitz overhears Bridget and Tony calling out to Fievel, but is sure that there may be another "Fievel" somewhere, until he sees Mama picking up his son's hat. They team up for a final effort to find him, and in the end, Papa's violin playing leads Fievel back into the arms of his family. The journey ends with Henri taking everyone to see his newly completed project — the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
, and the Mouskewitzes' new life in America begins.
Cast
- Phillip GlasserPhillip GlasserPhillip Glasser is an American actor and producer. He is best known for the role of Fievel Mousekewitz in the animated films, An American Tail and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and the television series Fievel's American Tails.In the late 1990s he played the role of Eugene in NBC Saturday...
as Fievel Mousekewitz. While "Fievel" is the generally accepted spelling of his name, the opening credits spell him as "Feivel", which is technically the correct Yiddish transliteration of the name (see also Shraga Feivel MendlowitzShraga Feivel MendlowitzRabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz was an early leader of American Orthodoxy and founder of key institutions such as Torah Vodaath, a Yeshiva in Brooklyn, and Torah U'Mesorah, an outreach and educational organization. He is credited by many to have pioneered authentic Jewish education in the United...
and Feivel GrubergerPhilip BergPhilip S. Berg is an American rabbi and current Dean of the worldwide Kabbalah Centre organization.Having written a number of books on the subject of Kabbalah, Berg believes that the philosophy should not be taught exclusively to a select few Jewish scholars but become a shared wealth of practical...
) since Yiddish evolved from a medieval form of GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and its rules for transliteration are therefore based on German orthography (the ending credits spell his name as "Fievel"). However, many English-speaking writers have come to adopt the spelling Fievel (with reversed i and first e) especially for this character; it was this spelling that was used on the film's poster, in promotional materials and tie-in merchandise, and in the title of the sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes WestAn American Tail: Fievel Goes WestAn American Tail: Fievel Goes West is a 1991 American animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and released by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to An American Tail, and the fourth installment in terms of the series' fictional chronology...
. He was named after Spielberg's maternal grandfather, Philip Posner, whose Yiddish name was Feivel. The scene in which he presses up against a window to look into a classroom filled with American "schoolmice" is based on a story Spielberg remembered about his grandfather, who told him that Jews were only able to listen to school lessons through open windows while sitting outside in the snow. His last name is a play on the Jewish-Russian last name "Moskowitz", the name of the human occupants of the house his family is living under in the beginning of the film. - Amy Green as Tanya Mousekewitz (singing voice provided by Betsy Cathcart), Fievel's older sister. Optimistic, cheerful and obedient, she continued to believe that her brother was alive after he was washed off the ship en route to America. She was given an American name 'Tillie' at the immigrationImmigrationImmigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
point at Castle Garden on Ellis IslandEllis IslandEllis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
. - John P. FinneganJohn P. FinneganJohn Finnegan, or sometimes known as J.P. Finnegan, is an American film actor, mostly known for his roles in the American crime fiction series Columbo which aired regularly from 1971 to 1978....
as Warren T. Rat, a cat disguised as a rat and the leader of the Mott Street Maulers, a gang of cats who terrorize the mice of New York City. He is accompanied nearly all the time by his accountant Digit, a small British-accented cockroachCockroachCockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitations...
. - Nehemiah PersoffNehemiah PersoffNehemiah Persoff is an American film and television character actor. He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate.Born in what is now part of Israel, Persoff emigrated with his family to the United States in 1929...
as Papa Mousekewitz, the head of the Mousekewitz family who plays the violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
and tells stories to his children. - Erica Yohn as Mama Mousekewitz, Fievel's mother. She appears to be the stricter of the two Mousekewitz parents and has a fear of flying.
- Pat MusickPat MusickPat Musick is an American voice actress. She is the mother of Mae Whitman.-Television roles:* 2 Stupid Dogs - Additional Voices* The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda - Additional Voices...
as Tony Toponi, a streetwise young mouse of ItalianItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
descent and with a 'tough New Yorker' attitude. He meets Fievel during their slavery at the sweatshop. He takes a liking to him, and gives him an American name: "Philly" (Philip). After they escape the sweatshop, he becomes Fievel's friend and guide to the town. - Dom DeLuiseDom DeLuiseDominick "Dom" DeLuise was an American actor, comedian, film director, television producer, chef, and author. He was the husband of actress Carol Arthur from 1965 until his death and the father of: actor, director, pianist, and writer Peter DeLuise; actor David DeLuise; and actor Michael DeLuise...
as Tiger, a very large, cowardly, long-haired orange cat who also happens to be vegetarian. - Christopher PlummerChristopher PlummerArthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
as Henri, a pigeon of FrenchFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
descent, who is in New York City while building the Statue of LibertyStatue of LibertyThe Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
. - Cathianne Blore as Bridget, an Irish activist and Tony's girlfriend.
- Neil RossNeil RossTheodoric Neilson "Neil" Ross is an English voice actor and announcer, born in London, England and now resident and working in Los Angeles, in the United States. He has provided voices for in many American cartoons, particularly those based on Hasbro products and Marvel Comics, and numerous...
as Honest John, a local Irish-born mouse politician who knows every voting mouse in New York City. An ambulance-chasing drunkard who takes advantage of voters' concerns to increase his political prestige, he is a stereotype of the 19th-century Tammany HallTammany HallTammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society...
politicians. - Madeline KahnMadeline KahnMadeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...
as Gussie Mausheimer, a German-born considered to be the richest in New York City, who rallies the mice into fighting back against the cats. - Will RyanWill RyanWill Ryan is an American voice actor and producer–writer–composer, well-known for singing about the American West. In the late seventies he teamed up with Phil Baron as Willio and Phillio. They had regular gigs on television, radio and comedy clubs and universities throughout the US...
as Digit, Warren T.'s BritishBritish peopleThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
cockroach accountant who has a fondness for counting money, but is plagued by frequent electrical charges in his antennae whenever he gets nervous or excited. - Hal SmithHal Smith (actor)Harold John "Hal" Smith was an American character actor and voice actor. Smith is best known as Otis Campbell, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, and was the voice of many characters on various animated cartoon shorts...
as Moe, a fat rat who runs the sweatshop Fievel is sold to by Warren T.
Production
While all of the animal characters were animated from scratch, the human characters were animated using the rotoscopingRotoscope
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator...
technique, in which sequences were shot in live action and then traced onto animation cels. This provides a realistic look for human characters, and distinguishes the cartoonish animal characters from the more realistically animated humans. Rotoscoping is frequently employed in Don Bluth films, including The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH is a 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth in his directorial debut. It is an adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The film was produced by Aurora Pictures and released by United Artists. While released to critical acclaim,...
and Anastasia
Anastasia (1997 film)
Anastasia is a 1997 American animated musical film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. It was the first feature film to be released by Fox Animation Studios....
.
Music
The musical score for the film was composed by James HornerJames Horner
James Roy Horner is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements...
. The song "Somewhere Out There
Somewhere Out There (James Horner song)
"Somewhere Out There" is a song written by James Horner, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Its single was released by American recording artists, pop rock icon Linda Ronstadt and R&B musician James Ingram...
", composed by Horner and written by Barry Mann
Barry Mann
Barry Mann is an American songwriter, and part of a successful songwriting partnership with his wife, Cynthia Weil.-Career:...
, won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
. One scene incorporates the John Phillip Sousa march Stars and Stripes Forever.
Theatrical
At the time of its release, An American Tail became the highest grossing non-Disney produced animated feature, drawing over $47 million USD. It was also one of the first animated films to outdraw a Disney film, beating out The Great Mouse DetectiveThe Great Mouse Detective
The Great Mouse Detective is a 1986 animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, originally released to movie theaters on July 2, 1986 by Walt Disney Pictures...
(also released in 1986 but four months earlier) by over $22 million USD. It would later be outgrossed by the next Bluth film, 1988's The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time is a 1988 American animated adventure film directed and co-produced by Don Bluth , and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall....
, which marginally outperformed Oliver and Company. The record would quickly be shattered with the release of The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
three years later.
Home media
The film was released on VHS in the same year by CIC VideoCIC Video
CIC Video was a home video distributor, owned by Cinema International Corporation , and operated in some countries by local operators...
, with a Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
dubbed version separately released on VHS as Un cuento americano (An American Tale, dropping the pun inherent in the English title), and is now available on a DVD that contains the main English track, as well as dubbing for French and Spanish.
Reception
An American Tail was a box office success, the first among Universal's animated releases to do so. The film has grossed up to $47 million in the United States and $84 million worldwide.Currently, An American Tail has a "B" rating at Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...
. After years of its Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
score going back and forth between "fresh" and "rotten", it has managed to settle above the line at 63%. Its score among the website "community" is more secure at 84%.
The staff of Halliwell's Film Guide gave it one star out of four. "[This] expensive cartoon feature," they wrote, "[has] not much in the way of narrative interest or indeed humor."
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
- Somewhere Out There - Nominated
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
- Nominated Animated Film
Sequels and spinoffs
The film was followed by its theatrical sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes WestAn American Tail: Fievel Goes West
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is a 1991 American animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and released by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to An American Tail, and the fourth installment in terms of the series' fictional chronology...
(1991), the television series Fievel's American Tails
Fievel's American Tails
Fievel's American Tails is an American/Canadian animated television series, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio, Nelvana, and Universal Cartoon Studios. It aired for one season in 1992, and continued Fievel's adventures from the film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West...
, and two direct-to-video sequels: An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island
An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island
An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island, titled in the film as An American Tail III: The Treasure of Manhattan Island was the first direct-to-video and third film in the An American Tail series. This film was first released in the UK in 1998. It was released by Universal Studios Home...
and An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster
An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster
An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster was the second direct-to-video sequel to An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island and the 4th and last film in the An American Tail tetralogy, starring Thomas Alexander Dekker as the main character, the young Fievel Mousekewitz. This film...
, none of which Don Bluth had any involvement with.
Fievel later served as the mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
for Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's Amblimation
Amblimation
Amblimation was the animation production arm of Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and was active from 1989 until about 1997.The feature animation studio was located in London, England, UK...
animation studio, appearing in its production logo
Production logo
A production logo, vanity card, vanity plate, vanity logo or vogo is a logo used by movie studios and television production companies to brand what they produce. Vanity logos are usually seen at the beginning of a theatrical movie , or at the end of a television program or TV movie...
. Also, as reported on the official An American Tail website, Fievel has become the mascot for UNICEF as well. There is also a Fievel-themed playground at Universal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida is an American theme park located in Orlando, Florida. Opened on June 7, 1990, the park's theme is the entertainment industry, in particular movies and television. Universal Studios Florida inspires its guests to "ride the movies," and it features numerous attractions and...
, featuring a large water slide and many over-sized objects such as books, glasses, cowboy boots, and more. It is the only such playground at any of NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
's theme parks.
Suspected plagiarism
Art SpiegelmanArt Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
suspected Spielberg of plagiarism due to the fact the Jews are depicted as mice in An American Tail just as in Spiegelman's earlier Maus
Maus
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a biography of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of...
, a metaphor Spiegelman had adopted from Nazi propaganda. Instead of pursuing copyright litigation, Spiegelman opted to beat the movie's release date by convincing his publishers to split Maus into two volumes and publish the first before he even finished the second.