An American Tail

An American Tail (1986)
Dir. by Don Bluth

Starring Phillip Glasser, Nehemiah Persoff, John P. Finnegan and Dom DeLuise

[content warning: extensive talk of antisemitism, immigrant persecution, child labor, trauma-inducing images and a brief reference to the Irish-English conflict]

Plot:

After their home is burned in an anti-Jewish pogrom in the 1880s, a family of Russian mice emigrate to the United States. Separated from the rest of his family upon arrival, young Fievel Mousekewitz sets out on a quest to find them, and ends up inspiring the mice of New York City to fight back against the cats that are oppressing them.

Nostalgia:

As I said in my The Land Before Time review, I know that this was one of the first movies that my parents took me to see in the theater. However, I have absolutely no memory of doing so, and only remember it from the VHS copy that I grew up with. I did have a Fievel stuffed animal, however, that I retained for a very long time – probably at least middle school, if not high school.

Review:

What is it with Don Bluth and making incredibly dark movies, anyway? This is the second Bluth movie I’ve watched for this project, and I have strong memories of the other two big Bluth movies (The Secret of NIMH and All Dogs Go to Heaven). And from what I’ve seen and remember, all four have content that would be likely to give their target audience nightmares. It’s like each successive movie in his filmography was playing an escalating game of “hold my beer” with childhood trauma.

This movie begins with the destruction of the Mousekewitz family home in Russia by Cossacks, in a rather intense burst of sudden violence. While I was definitely too young to understand what was going on, I now find it pretty clear that this is supposed to be an anti-Semitic pogrom, especially given the family’s surname and nationality. Their religion is never brought up explicitly during the film, though there’s definite allusions to it in the ending (more on that later). While I think that there’s definitely a missed opportunity for more concrete representation here, I’m not sure how much of it really would have fit the narrative they devised, given how much of the movie focuses on a fairly young child trying to navigate a city on his own. 

Speaking of which, this movie really doesn’t shy away from the horrors that might happen to a lost kid in 1880s New York. Almost the first thing that happens to Fievel after he arrives is being sold into labor in a sweatshop by a businessman that pretends to be helping him find his family. He gets chased, nearly eaten, attacked by humans, and even after triumphing over the cats is left for dead and ends up crying alone in a puddle in the rain. Thanks, Bluth, for attempting to traumatize the parents this time as well as the kids.

But hey, at least there are songs in this one, to break the depressing mood and give some light to the movie, right? Yeah, about that… The songs are all pretty memorable, even if I only remembered the one distinctly going in. However, even the happy ones are quite dark when you look at them closer. The big rousing number at the beginning, “There Are No Cats in America”, in addition to being dramatic irony itself in that we the audience know that there are indeed cats there, is actually just a series of stories of loss and murder. The Italian mouse portrays cats as mob bosses who murder his mother (in what might be a Godfather IIreference), and the Irish mouse’s girlfriend is eaten by a calico – a cat whose colors could easily be described as “black and tan.”

And the actual plan that the mice enact to get rid of their cat oppressors is something right out of a horror movie. I only had vague memories of the movie’s ending, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting a steampunk mecha-mouse version of the Golem of Prague! The fact that the “Great Mouse of Minsk” is clearly rotoscoped over actual photographs of a real-life version of the thing makes it even creepier and nightmare-inducing. Are we absolutely sure that Bluth wasn’t paid off by a cartel of unscrupulous child psychologists looking for extra business?

Despite all of that, however….I still actually enjoyed the movie! The animation itself is gorgeous, obvious rotoscoping aside, and all of the songs are quite memorable. I’m not sure I’m going to be showing it to my nieces like, ever, but as an adult I definitely appreciate the craft that went in to making it a lot more than I did as a child. Still not sure why I never had any nightmares about it, though.

Nostalgia: B
Rewatch: B+, extensive “WTH, Bluth!?” notwithstanding

Stray Thoughts:

-“Somewhere Out There” positively destroys me every time. I watched this on my laptop using a Buffalo Wild Wings’ public wifi, and I was sloppy-crying in the restaurant.

-Even though critics were mixed on the movie, it ended up becoming the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film in U.S. history up to that point. It actually beat the Disney movie released that year, The Great Mouse Detective, at the box office by quite a lot. Disney and Bluth would have a rivalry for several more movies, going head-to-head until The Little Mermaid started the Disney Renaissance and pretty much ended Bluth’s time as a major competitor.

The Land Before Time

The Land Before Time (1988)

Dir. by Don Bluth

Starring Gabriel Damon, Candace Hutson and Pat Hingle

[content warning: (dinosaur) children in peril, actual child death]

Plot:

A group of young dinosaurs, led by the Apatosaurus Littlefoot, are separated from their families by an earthquake.  Together they seek out the Great Valley, the only place remaining with abundant plant life, while attempting to avoid the predation of a hungry T. Rex.

Nostalgia:

While I’ve been told that The Black Cauldron was the first movie I ever saw in theaters, and I know I saw An American Tail as well, this is the first movie that I actually remember seeing in a movie theater.  I had a Littlefoot stuffed animal that I loved growing up, and watching this kicked off a several-year-long obsession with dinosaurs.

Review:

It’s probably been a quarter century since I’ve seen this movie in its entirely.  We probably sold the VHS in a garage sale some time in middle school, and I don’t even recall watching any scenes on Youtube or anything.  However, it’s so ingrained in my childhood that I found myself recognizing scene after scene as if it had only been a couple years at most since I’d watched it.

I’m well aware of Don Bluth’s reputation for producing dark children’s fare, and from what I remember of his three other big 80s movies (The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail and especially All Dogs Go to Heaven) that’s a deserved reputation.  This movie isn’t really an exception, though I found that the antics of the young dinosaurs cut the darkness with significant levity in a way that I don’t remember from the other films.  While most of the movies have a single comic relief character (usually voiced by Dom DeLuise), all five of the main dinosaurs here take turns providing the physical comedy.  When you think about it, the concept of five dinosaurs, who may or may not be orphaned, who have to travel across a deserted, blasted landscape while being stalked by an enormous predator, is inherently dark and disturbing, so the extra humor to break the mood was actually quite appreciated.

The animation itself is simply gorgeous.  A relatively large part of the movie is dialogue-free, which allows even more emphasis to be placed on the artwork, especially all of the backgrounds.  This was also the first major dinosaur movie made after the 1970s renaissance in paleontology, and the animators clearly showed their work, at least up to the level of knowledge they had available in the mid-80s.  These clearly aren’t the swamp-dwelling, sluggish creatures of prior decades (and films), even if they do get a couple of dinosaurs from different periods mixed together.

I actually liked all of the vocal performances, even the “annoying” ones, and also appreciated the decision to leave Sharptooth the T. Rex unvoiced, as it’s just as much of a force of nature for Littlefoot and co. to overcome as any of the earthquakes and tar pits.  While on the subject, I do feel like I need to touch on the tragedy of Ducky, whose voice actress, Judith Barsi, would be murdered by her own father before the movie would come out in theaters.  I really can’t think of either this or All Dogs Go to Heaven without thinking of her (and if you’re not crying yet, Ducky’s “Yep Yep Yep” catchphrase is inscribed on her tombstone).

Another thing I’d completely forgotten about in the intervening decades was just how short this movie is.  Animated movies not produced by Pixar tend to be on the shorter end as is, but this movie was short even for most theatrical animation, barely making the 70 minute mark.  From what I’ve read, over ten minutes of completed animation had to be cut out of the movie to earn a G rating (this was a time when G was the expected rating for all animation.  The first Disney movie to get a PG rating, The Black Cauldron, had debuted only a couple of years earlier, and had bombed in part as a result).  This included fairly graphic sequences of Sharptooth mauling Littlefoot’s mother, a scene that remains in the movie only in the form of shadows against a wall.  Reportedly, Steven Spielberg himself, no stranger to child endangerment in his movies, told Don Bluth that he’d have “kids crying in the lobby” if he didn’t make the edits.  As far as I know, none of the removed footage has ever shown up on any print or home media release, but I’d love to see it if it ever became available.

Inexplicably, this rather dark, dangerous dinosaur journey would go on to spark a very long-running franchise of happy, bright direct-to-DVD animated musicals.  I wonder how many of the kids who grew up with those movies have ever gone back to watch the original, and been completely shocked by how different from them it is.  While it’s a little too slight for it to have a lot of rewatch value for me now, especially when compared to Bluth’s other 80s movies, I can still definitely appreciate the impact it had on me as a child.

Nostalgia: A

Rewatch: B

Stray Thoughts:

-I didn’t mention it above, but the score for the movie, composed by James Horner, is really quite excellent as well, and gets more of a spotlight than most scores due to the lack of dialogue in a lot of scenes.

-My favorite scene in the movie is actually the one scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the narrative.  For about two minutes, the movie comes to halt while we watch a group of small pteradons fight wordlessly over a cherry, until eventually another unrelated lizard saunters up and eats it.  They’re all dejected, until the mother shows up with a cherry for each of them.  Finally, as they’re walking away, they pass a depressed-looking Littlefoot, and one of them attempts to give their cherry to the dinosaur to cheer him up.  It feels like something out of the golden age of Disney animated shorts, and I found it positively charming.

The Flight of Dragons

As a TV movie, it didn't have a poster. But I like this 
homemade one by Ursula Lopez on Redbubble

The Flight of Dragons (finished in 1982, not released until 1986)

Dir. by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass

Starring James Earl Jones, John Ritter and Harry Morgan

[content warning: burning to death, icky romantic behavior towards a child]

Plot:

Faced with the weakening of magic caused by the rise of scientific reasoning, three of the four great wizards attempt to seal off the realms of magic from the rest of the world, only to be opposed by the Red Wizard Ommadon.  To defeat him and save magic, they recruit a knight, a dragon, and a man of science from the 20^th century, Peter Dickinson.  However, before the quest can begin, a magical mishap causes Dickinson’s mind to be placed in the body of the dragon.  The quest must go on, though, so Dickinson has to save magic and learn to be a dragon at the same time.

Nostalgia:

My relationship with this movie and its source material is an interesting one.  It was originally produced as a TV movie, and that’s how I first saw it, multiple times on cable somewhere between the ages of nine and twelve.  I never managed to catch it at the beginning to tape it on VHS, though, and over time I completely forgot about it.  Flash forward to my junior year in high school, and I’m an avid reader of fantasy novels.  A friend in one of my English classes recommends a book to me, The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson, and lets me borrow a copy.  Through the first hundred pages or so, I had a growing sense of familiarity with it, but couldn’t place where I was recognizing it from.  Then I got to the sandmirks scene, and I suddenly remembered.  While the movie had billed itself as being adapted from the book of the same name by Peter Dickinson, the actual plot of the movie was from the Dickson novel I was reading.

Review:

This is the first request I’m doing for a review, and it actually turns out to be a movie that I probably should have had on my list to begin with.  The story I related above is actually one of the “OMG” moments as a fantasy reader that I remember the most strongly.  I’ll get into the differences between the book(s) and the movie more later on, but for now I’d like to focus on the actual movie itself.

Despite being written and produced by an American production company, Rankin/Bass (most famous for their stop-motion Christmas movies), it has a lot more in common visually with 1980s anime.  Of course, this is because Rankin/Bass farmed the actual animation out to the Japanese firm Topcraft, which also did the animated Hobbit movie and The Last Unicorn (Topcraft itself would go bankrupt in 1985, and was bought by Hayao Miyazaki and renamed Studio Ghibli.  Yes, that Studio Ghibli).   Like the two previous projects, Flight of Dragons has a highly distinctive style that immediately sets it apart from a lot of the other animation being aired in America at the time.  It also has a top-notch voice cast.  Other than a couple cases where Bob McFadden’s British accent noticeably slips, I enjoyed pretty much everyone.  And you can never go wrong casting James Earl Jones as an evil wizard.

Speaking of the wizards, they were actually surprisingly diverse given the era that the movie was produced.  While the main wizard character, Carolinus, is a white Gandalf type, the two other good wizards are Chinese and ambiguously brown (though coded as Middle Eastern by his costume).  The movie also scores a couple of points on the gender front, with a badass female archer joining the quest and her gender never being called into question for it.  Unfortunately, however, this is undercut quite a bit by the other female character, Carolinus’s adoptive daughter Melisande (and yes, I really want to put an R in there every time I type it).  Her only purpose in the film seems to be serving as a love interest.  Not only does she have a love-at-first-sight plot with Dickinson, a trope I hate, but there’s an even ickier bit between her and the knight, Sir Orrin, that I’d completely forgot about.  While relating his backstory to Dickinson, he tells about meeting Melisande for the first time when she was about five, and immediately vowing to fall in love with and marry her, “when she was old enough, of course.”  Umm….how about no?  In fact, can we just take that whole conversation and burn it, please?

This feels like one of those joke contests where you have to
come up with a funny caption

This movie is an amalgamation of two very different sources: a speculative non-fiction book called The Flight of Dragons, in which a biologist attempts to theorize how the standard mythological dragon traits (breathing fire, etc.) could have evolved to work biologically, and a fantasy novel by Gordon R. Dickson, in which a medieval history doctoral candidate and his fiancée get transported to a fantasy version of 13^th century England, and he accidentally ends up in the body of a dragon.  The two have very little to do with each other, and are a fairly awkward fit together.  Most of the Flight of Dragons content comes in a couple of scenes in the middle, where the narrative comes to a screeching halt while Dickinson learns how dragons work.  I don’t know why they didn’t just adapt The Dragon and the George straight through, as they’ve already got about 80% of the plot present.  Maybe they thought the character (called Jim Eckert in the book), wouldn’t be as relatable to the target kid audience if he was in his 30s with a fiancée?  If that’s so, why then have the entire final confrontation hinge on Dickinson’s knowledge of science and mathematics, with him spouting off multiple theorems and equations in rapid fire?  For being aimed at kids, there’s sure a lot of five dollar words being thrown around.

The movie is also incredibly dark for a kids’ movie.  Not quite Don Bluth dark, but there was a lot higher body count than I was remembering.  The final confrontation ends with a near total party kill, with only Dickinson surviving.  Yes, they all got brought back at the end, but that doesn’t discount the scene of Sir Orrin literally getting set on fire, then slaying the evil dragon that did it while he burns to death.  There’s also a scene where Dickinson-as-dragon and his elderly dragon mentor get incredibly drunk at an inn and sing drinking songs together, while Sir Orrin and Danielle the archer head off to a room holding hands after she proclaims it could be their last night alive.

Don’t know why scene didn’t give me nightmares as a kid

So I did enjoy this rewatch, but couldn’t help spending most of the running time comparing it to the book.  It’s a pretty good kids’ movie (what nine-year-old wouldn’t want to turn into a dragon?), but I’d actually recommend anyone interested to actually skip the film – it’s pretty hard to track down at the moment, having only ever been released on DVD as a burn-on-request title from Amazon – and read the book instead.  It’s got pretty much all of the scenes that this one does, plus a better ending (which is whited-out below for the spoiler-conscious).

Nostalgia: A-

Rewatch: B-

Stray Thoughts:

-[ending spoilers for The Dragon and the George - highlight to read]:  In the movie, Peter Dickinson rejects magic and returns to the 20th century, with the Princess Melisande deciding to join him.  In the book, Jim Eckert, a soon-to-be-married academic trying to live on student loans and his fiancee's teaching assistant salary, says "Screw that, I have a castle!" and stays in fantasyland.  He becomes human again, and inherits the lands and title of an evil knight he'd defeated as a dragon.  There are actually half a dozen more books, where he becomes a magical apprentice under Carolinus, learns to become a dragon at will, and is called into service fighting for the king in France.

-They included pretty much every character from the book, except for my favorite: Welsh archer Dafydd ap Hwyel.  I guess two archers would have been too much for them?

-There was talk a couple of years ago about making a live-action sequel to the movie, based on the second book in the series, The Dragon Knight.  I’m sure it’s been dropped by now, since I would have heard something about it otherwise, but it’s something I wish had been picked up.

Cutest. Dragon. Ever.