Cartoon Corner- An American Tail

Originally posted at the DL April 2016

... oh yeah, this is more or less a musical.



There Are No Cats in America- Y'know, intuitively I feel like the breaks into cartoony visual shifts are a bit odd for Bluth.  Even though that's probably not actually true... just compared to Bluth's other early works.  I suppose it's a portent of later bits of his career really.  Anyway, as a crowd song with some intentionally rough singers, I don't have too much to say about it musically, but it has this interesting bit of misery olympics, which is strangely perfect for this.  "Y'all remember we're deperate refugees fleeing on the slim hope that AMERICA fuck yeah! is all we dream it to be right?"  "That ain't no reason to be down!  When I was little cats used to kill us and dance about on our graves!"

Never Say Never- I kinda feel bad for whatever poor kid is doing Fieval.  It's really obvious they have a legit kid doing the voice, and he sooooo hasn't had any true singing training, so they have to have him kinda whine through this song and let the dude doing the french accent try and cover for him once he actually joins in.  I don't think it quite pulls off what it needs to narratively though; like... he has to shift from hopeless to determined and I don't really see that moment in there where he's convinced about it.  He just sorta flips a switch.

I'm kinda digging the way they actually have Fieval work in this.  The way his naivete is just inherent to the character, and it can both get him into trouble and endear people to him.  The fact they pay off his love of the mouse-Rapunzel story to escape the sweatshop is cute and sells the character well.

Somewhere Out There- The placement of this is strange to me, mostly because it's not the first scene where Fieval and the Mousekewitzes miss each other.  I've been told that this scene is the one people remember from the film which is weird in an absolute sense since it's a very short song and the visuals aren't all that different from the movie as a whole.  But... An American Tail isn't huge on specific imagery or long spectacular scenes.  It's a small details kinda movie, and this song does probably the most to capture the overall emotion of the film.

A Duo- I love the way Bluth uses color shifting.  The manipulation of size works pretty well too and plays nicely with the idea of the song.  Not that it's a great song, for all Dom DeLuise is pretty fun.

WEWEASE... THE SECWET WEAPON!!

I have to say though, while I haven't hyped any of the songs (since they're trying to be in-character with them so these are rustic folks with untrained voices, y'know?) the rest of the music is quite excellent.  Sappy to be sure, but shit, we're trying to be a family movie about the totality of the immigrant experience, sappy is kinda the point.
Hence the glorious slow motion camera rotation against the fresh, coppery splendor of Lady Liberty and all that.

This movie runs counter to a lot of my own biases though.  It's much focused on introducing new characters and moving briskly from scene to scene, without much pause for character depth or emphasis of emotional moments.  There's one bit where the Mousekewitzes are finally clued in that Fieval was actually still out there, but the rest is very transitory in terms of plot or emotional beats.  It makes sense with the overall idea of the movie, but I apparently don't have a special emotional attachment to that particular american experience.

Bridget makes me smile though.

Rating- 6/10