An American Tail

An American Tail is a 1986 American animated musical adventure comedy-drama film directed by Don Bluth and written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss from a story by David Kirschner, Freudberg and Geiss. The film stars the voices of Phillip Glasser, John Finnegan, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Plummer. It is the story of Fievel Mousekewitz and his family as they emigrate from the Russian empire to the United States for freedom, but Fievel gets lost and must find a way to reunite with them.

The film was released in the United States on November 21, 1986, by Universal Pictures, four months after Disney's The Great Mouse Detective was released. It received positive reviews and was a box office hit, making it the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film at the time; the film is currently Don Bluth's third highest-grossing animated film, only behind The Land Before Time (1988) and Anastasia (1997).

Its success, along with that of fellow Bluth film The Land Before Time and Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (both 1988), and Bluth's departure from their partnership, prompted executive producer Steven Spielberg to establish his own animation studio, Amblimation, in London, England.

The film spawned a franchise (made without the involvement of Bluth) that included a sequel, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991); a CBS television series based on the film, Fievel's American Tails, premiered in 1992; and two additional direct-to-video sequels set between the first two films, An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island (1998) and An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster (1999).





== Plot ==

In 1885 Shostka, Russia, the Mousekewitzes are a Russian-Jewish family of mice who live with a human family named Moskowitz. While celebrating Hanukkah, Papa gives his hat to his son, Fievel, and tells him about the United States, a country in which he believes there are no cats. The celebration is interrupted when a battery of Cossacks ride through the village square in an anti-Semitic arson attack and their cats attack the village mice.