An American Tail

Executive producer Steven Spielberg in 2017

Production began in December 1984 as a collaboration between Spielberg, Bluth, and Universal, based on a concept by David Kirschner. Originally, the idea was conceived as a television special, but Spielberg felt it had potential as a feature film.[6] Spielberg had asked Bluth to "make me something pretty like you did in NIMH...make it beautiful". In a 1985 interview, he described his role in the production as "first in the area of story, inventing incidents for the script, and now consists of looking, every three weeks to a month, at the storyboards that Bluth sends me and making my comments". Bluth later commented that "Steven has not dominated the creative growth of Tail at all. There is an equal share of both of us in the picture". Nevertheless, this was Spielberg's first animated feature, and it took some time for him to learn that adding a two-minute scene would take dozens of people months of work. In 1985 he stated: "At this point, I'm enlightened, but I still can't believe it's so complicated".[7] It was Universal Pictures' first animated feature film since Pinocchio in Outer Space in 1965 and the first animated film that they co-produced.

Originally, the concept consisted of an all-animal world, like Disney's Robin Hood, but Bluth suggested featuring an animal world existing as a hidden society from the human world, like his own NIMH and Disney's The Rescuers. After viewing The Rescuers, Spielberg agreed. Emmy Award-winning writers Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss (known for their work on Sesame Street) were brought in to expand the script. When the initial script was complete, it was extremely long and was heavily edited before its final release. Bluth felt uncomfortable with the main character's name, thinking "Fievel" was too foreign-sounding, and he felt audiences wouldn't remember it.[8] Spielberg disagreed. The character was named after his maternal grandfather, Philip Posner, whose Yiddish name was Fievel. The scene in which he presses up against a window to look into a classroom filled with American "school mice" is based on a story Spielberg remembered about his grandfather, who told him that Jews were only able to listen to lessons through open windows while sitting outside in the snow.[9] Spielberg eventually won out, though something of a compromise was reached by having Tony refer to Fievel as "Filly".[8] Spielberg also had some material cut that he felt was too intense for children, including a scene Bluth was developing revolving around wave monsters while the family was at sea.[10]

Bluth described the process of voice casting as "sometimes you can select a 'name' voice [i.e., a well-known actor] because it fits the essence of the character so well. Other times, you need to seek an obscure voice, close your eyes, and just listen to it. If it has the highs and lows in the deliverance of lines and it captures the focus of the character, it allows the animators to get a true fix on the action."[11]

• Glasser (Fievel) was discovered by accident when Bluth and his crew overheard him auditioning for an Oscar Mayer commercial.[11]
• Green (Tanya Mousekewitz) was a young actress who had done some previous television series work and several commercials.[11]
• Persoff, a respected actor in many films, was chosen to play the part of Papa Mousekewitz mostly because he had a similar role as Barbra Streisand's father in Yentl.[11]
• Yohn (Mama Mousekewitz) has appeared in many features, but her work as a Russian gypsy on a TV show attracted the attention of Bluth and John Pomeroy.[11]
• Finnegan won the role of Warren T. Rat by reciting excerpts of Shakespeare's Hamlet in the voice of a Brooklyn taxi driver. This idea inspired the writers to make Warren a pretentious illiterate who continually misquoted Shakespeare.[11]
• Musick (Tony Toponi) is one of a small number of women in animation chosen to voice a male character. She based his voice on a friend she knew from grade school.[11]
• DeLuise (Tiger) had worked previously with Bluth in The Secret of NIMH, and DeLuise even added material to the script at various points. During the song "A Duo", he suggested they stop the music where the lyrics mention "back scratch" and have Fievel actually scratch Tiger's back.[11]
• Henri was originally to be voiced by comedian Sid Caesar, and was conceived as scraggly and worn, but later Plummer was cast for the part and Henri was drawn with a more dignified look. Bluth felt Henri was an essential character to act as a voice for the statue "welcoming" Fievel to the new world.[8]
• Kahn was chosen to play the part of Gussie Mausheimer with the hopes that she would use a voice similar to the one she used as a character in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.[8]

Will Ryan (Digit), Neil Ross (Honest John), Cathianne Blore (Bridget), and Hal Smith (Moe) are all voice actors well known in the animation industry.[11]

In designing the look of the film and its characters, Bluth worked with Amblin Entertainment and the Sears marketing department (Sears had a major marketing push on the main character). He decided to make a stylistic shift from the more angular "modern style" of animation of the time to a style similar to Disney animation from the 1940s, where the characters have a more soft and cuddly feel. This proved successful, and at release many critics praised the "old fashioned style" of the film's look and feel.[8] This was during a period when the market for nostalgia was particularly strong among baby boomers,[12] who at this time were seeking products for their young children, and only three years before the beginning of the Disney Renaissance for the studio Bluth once worked for.

Bluth preferred to storyboard an entire picture, but it soon proved to be an enormous task. Larry Leker was brought in to assist, turning Bluth's rough sketches into final storyboard panels. Bluth commented that he would then "send them over to [Spielberg]. Often I brought them over myself, so that I could explain them. Steven would get very excited by what he saw, and we'd edit the boards right there...adding more drawings, or trimming some back". A large crew of animators was pulled together from around the world, utilizing cel painters in Ireland. Discussion arose about moving the entire production to Ireland, but Spielberg balked at the idea of a story called An American Tail being produced overseas.[13]

At this time, Bluth and his crew discovered that using a video printer greatly increased their productivity. They could videotape an action, then print out small black and white thermal images from the tape for reference for both human and animal characters, a shorthand method similar to the rotoscoping technique (called in fact xerography) used since the earliest days of animation, in which sequences are shot in live action and traced onto animation cels. They also utilized the process of building models and photographing them, particularly the ship at sea, and the "Giant Mouse of Minsk",[11] a technique also used in many Disney films.

During production, Amblin and Universal expected to view the dailies and approve all major work on the film, and various outside parties also requested changes here and there. The production buckled under the excessive oversight, and Bluth felt that he was losing freedom of control over the production process. As the release deadline approached, pressure grew among the crew and numerous problems arose, ranging from slower-than-expected cel painting in Ireland to low footage output by some animators. Also, the songwriters had written the score much later than originally desired. Suddenly scenes had to be dropped to save time and money and new, shorter scenes had to be created to help pick up the story points lost in the process, sometimes making the story line look jumbled. Notable cuts include the Mousekewitzes' journey across Europe, a scene in which they first meet Tiger and he gets stuck up in a tree, an upbeat song that Fievel was planned to sing while imprisoned in the sweatshop, and a scene that gave greater explanation of the changing of names at Ellis Island. Cuts are also responsible for baby Yasha's apparent disappearance after the boat trip.[14]

The film was also plagued by union difficulties. Bluth had agreed to accept $6.5 million to get it produced (which later grew to $9 million), at a time when Disney was spending around $12 million per film. He knew it would be difficult, but felt it was worth the sacrifice to work with Spielberg on a major project. With the agreement of his employees, salaries were frozen for a year and half. Unlike the former Bluth studios, the new Sullivan Bluth studios were non-union, and when many workers attempted to withdraw from the union, it sparked a battle between Bluth and the union that continued through most of production. It was mostly this struggle that later compelled Bluth to relocate to Ireland, which he felt offered a more supportive atmosphere.[15]

Original songs & scores performed in the film include:

The film has grossed up to $47 million in the United States and Canada, also known as the domestic box office, and $84 million worldwide.[20][21] At the time of its domestic release, it became the highest-grossing animated feature for an initial release[22] and the highest-grossing non-Disney produced animated feature. It was also one of the first animated films to outdraw a Disney one, beating out The Great Mouse Detective (another traditionally animated film involving mice that was released in 1986 but four months earlier) by over US$22 million. However, The Great Mouse Detective[23] was more successful with critics, most notably Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.[24] The inexpensive success of The Great Mouse Detective played a large role in the Disney Renaissance;[25][26] due to the fact that it was both a critical and financial success, which saved Walt Disney Animation Studios from going bankrupt after The Black Cauldron had flopped at the box office a year earlier. It would later be outgrossed by Bluth's next film, 1988's The Land Before Time, which marginally outperformed Oliver & Company; the latter did beat out The Land Before Time at the domestic box office by $5,000,000.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 72% approval rating based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The consensus is: "Exquisitely animated, An American Tail is a sweet, melancholy immigrants story".[24] On Metacritic it has a score of 38% based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "generally negative reviews".[27] Critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave it "two thumbs down" on a November 22, 1986, episode of their television program At the Movies, calling it "the most downbeat children's movie since Return to Oz", and that it was "way too depressing for young audiences".[28] Both reviewers also criticized how it gave little mention that the main characters were Jewish, or that the attack on their home at the beginning was an antisemitic one. They called it "a Jewish parable that doesn't want to declare itself" and felt that it "chickened out on its ethnic heritage".[28] In his own review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four, giving credit to the animation, calling it "full and detailed, enhanced by computers and an improvement on so much recent animation that cuts corners", but that the story was too "dark and gloomy".[29]

The film's writing garnered a mixed response. Halliwell's Film Guide claimed it didn't have "much in the way of narrative interest or indeed humor".[30] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "witless if well-meaning", adding that its high points were scenes involving the characters Gussie Mausheimer and Tiger.[3] In his review for the Chicago Reader, Pat Graham panned its "flimsy characterizations" but said that "the overall quality of the animation—baroquely executed if rather conventionally conceived—makes it worth a look".[31] Common Sense Media gave it largely positive reviews, as the group stated: "This is a heartwarming animated tale about the experience of immigrants coming to America. Told from the perspective of an adorable young mouse, An American Tail should engage kids in an important part of U.S. history".[32] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it "a bright-eyed tale of Jewish triumphs that will find a place in many young hearts", adding that "it reiterates the happiness of homogeneity, prepares the pups for both brotherhood and the free enterprise system. And it's as pretty as a cascade of soap bubbles".[33]

Roger Harlburt, reviewing for the Sun-Sentinel, also praised the character of Fievel: "You'll discover in gentle Fievel a endearing character that manages to be lovable without undue sentiment. His eyes may tear up once in a while and his lower lip quiver, but mostly he's ready to face the situation. Still, the superb animation makes you believe Fievel is a small boy lost in a big world".[34] Harlburt later summarized: "Laced with action scenes and peppered with amusing dialogue, the film moves along briskly. Little ones won't be bored. Original songs – including Never Say Never, Somewhere Out There and We're a Duo – are also entertaining. You'll marvel over the quality of Plummer's singing voice and be convulsed by DeLuise's feline antics".[34]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2004: AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:

• Somewhere Out There – Nominated

In September 1987, An American Tail was first released on VHS and became one of MCA Home Video's biggest sellers with sales of 1.4 million.[40] It was later released on LaserDisc in both regular[41] and CAV play editions in November 1991 by MCA Universal Home Video in North America, and CIC Video internationally.[42] On August 11, 1998, both the film and its sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West were digitally restored and re-released onto VHS in a 2-pack box set with both videos having clamshell cases. A DVD version was first made available on January 20, 2004, by Universal Studios,[43] which was presented in fullscreen aspect ratio only, and contained a number of changes from earlier versions, including re-dubbing certain character's voices in the Orphan Alley scene, the addition of new voices where there was previously no dialog, and new "humorous" sound effects. This version was reprinted along with other Universal films such as its sequel, The Land Before Time,[44] and Balto.[45] It was released in widescreen on Blu-ray for the first time on March 4, 2014, which included a digital HD and UltraViolet copy.[46] It had the same changes as the DVD, although part of the film's end credits music score was 9% sped-up this time (due to time constrictions). A re-release of the fullscreen DVD version with new cover artwork followed on February 3, 2015.[47] All four American Tail films were re-released on a combination pack DVD released on June 13, 2017.[48] That release marked the first widescreen debut of the first two films on a Region 1 DVD.