An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
File:American tail fievel goes west.jpg Original theatrical poster
Directed by	Phil Nibbelink Simon Wells
Written by	Flint Dille David Kirschner (creator) Charles Swenson (story)
Produced by	Steven Spielberg Robert Watts
Starring	Phillip Glasser James Stewart Erica Yohn Cathy Cavadini Nehemiah Persoff Dom DeLuise Amy Irving John Cleese Jon Lovitz
Edited by	Nick Fletcher
Music by	James Horner
Production company	Amblimation
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date	November 22, 1991 (USA) December 23, 1996 (JPN)
Running time	74 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$65,435,625

For the video game based on the film with the same name, see An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (video game)

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is an animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and released by Universal Pictures. It is the 1991 sequel to the 1986 film, An American Tail, the second film released in the American Tail series, and the fourth installment in terms of the series' fictional chronology. The sole theatrical sequel to An American Tail, it was later followed at the end of the 1990s by another two direct-to-video midquels, both of which took place chronologically before this film. A continuation of this installment, Fievel's American Tails, aired on the CBS Television Network in 1992.

Don Bluth, the original film's director, had no involvement with this film. Instead, it was directed by Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells. Wells went on to do We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Balto, and The Time Machine, while Phil went on to co-direct We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story and direct his own independent features.

The film follows the story of a family of Jewish-Russian mice who emigrate to the Wild West. In the film, Fievel Mousekewitz is separated from his family as the train approaches the American Old West; the film chronicles Fievel and Sheriff Wylie Burp (played by James Stewart in his final film) teaching Tiger how to act like a dog.

Plot

Seven years after settling in to their new home in The Bronx, New York, the impoverished Mousekewitz family soon finds that conditions are not as ideal as they had hoped, as they find themselves still struggling against the attacks of mouse-hungry felines. Fievel spends his days thinking about the wild west dog-sheriff Wylie Burp, while his sister, Tanya, dreams of becoming a singer. Meanwhile, Tiger's girlfriend Miss Kitty leaves him to find a new life out West, remarking that perhaps she's looking for "a cat that's more like a dog."

Tired of chasing, Cat R. Waul devises a plan to deliver the mice into his clutches. Using a mouse-cowpoke marionette, he entices the neighborhood mice, including the Mousekewitzs into moving yet again to a better life out west ("Way Out West"). Tiger chases the train, trying to catch up with his friends, but is thrown off course by a pack of angry dogs. While on the west-bound train, Fievel wanders into the livestock car, where he overhears the cats revealing their plot to turn them into "mouse burgers." After being discovered, Fievel is thrown from the train by Cat R. Waul's hench-spider, T.R. Chula, landing the mouse in the middle of the desert. The Mousekewitzes are heartbroken once again over the loss of Fievel and arrive at Green River with heavy hearts.

Upon arrival at Green River, Chula blocks up the water tower, drying up the river. Cat R. Waul approaches the mice and proposes to build a new saloon together, although intending to trick the mice into doing the bulk of the work and then eat them afterwards. Meanwhile, Fievel is wandering aimlessly through the desert, as is Tiger, who has found his way out west as well, and the two pass each other. However, each one figures that the other is a mirage and they continue on their separate ways. Tiger is captured by mouse Indians and hailed as a god. Fievel is picked up by a hawk and dropped over the mouse Indian village when fireworks scare and explode on the bird, making his feathers pop out of his body and reunites with Tiger. Tiger chooses to stay in while Fievel catches a passing tumbleweed, which takes him to Green River. As soon as Fievel makes his arrival, he quickly reunites with his family. He then tries to expose Cat R. Waul's true intentions. However, no one will believe him, and Cat R. Waul catches and almost eats him. However, he happens to hear Tanya, Fievel's older sister, singing while working and is enchanted by her voice ("Dreams to Dream").

He sends Tanya to Miss Kitty, who's now a saloon-girl cat, and she reveals that she didn't come out west by her own will, but at the request of Cat R. Waul - an action she now seems to regret. Cat R Waul tells Miss Kitty to put Tanya on stage. With a little encouragement from Miss Kitty, Tanya pulls off a great performance for the cats ("The Girl You Left Behind"). Meanwhile, Fievel is chased by Chula and briefly taken prisoner, but escapes. While walking out of town, Fievel stops to talk with an old hound sleeping outside the jail, discovering that the saturnine dog is in fact the legendary Wylie Burp. Fievel convinces Wylie to help the mices' plight and to train Tiger as a lawman and as a dog. Tiger is reluctant at first, but relents at the suggestion that a new persona might win back Miss Kitty. The trio: Wylie, Tiger, and Fievel go back to Green River to fight the cats, who had scheduled to kill the mice at sunset. At Green River, a giant mousetrap has been disguised as bleachers for a ceremony honoring the opening of Cat R. Waul's saloon. But before the trap can be tripped, the three foil the plot using their wits and their slingshots. But towards the end Chula captures Ms. Kitty as hostage, threatening to drop her from the tower. Tiger gets angry and ends up saving Ms. Kitty and using a pitchfork and Chula's web as a lasso with him trapped on it to hurtle Cat R. Waul and his men out of town by having them all piled on part of the mousetrap, which the heroes use as a catapult. The cats fly into the air, then land into a bag with the words: U.S. Mail written on it. The train picks the bag up and leaves.

Enchanted by his new personality, Miss Kitty and Tiger become reunited. Tanya becomes a famous singer (although she also appears to be happy with the way she was before by the end) and the water tower flows with water again, making Green River bloom with flowers. Fievel finds Wylie Burp away from the party who hands Fievel his sheriff badge. Fievel is unsure about taking it, since he feels he is not a traditional hero, but Wylie reminds him that, if it weren't for Fievel, he'd still be a washed up dog. He realizes his journey is still not over, and that "if you ride yonder, head up, eyes steady, heart open, I think one day you'll find that you're the hero you've been looking for".

Voices in order of appearance

• Fievel Mousekewitz (Phillip Glasser) is a mouse, (aged 8) and the main character of the American Tail franchise; in this installment, he is mostly seen with a cowboy hat on his head, that appears to be reversible into his trademark blue hat. Fievel dreams of fighting alongside his hero, Wylie Burp and being a western hero. Although Tiger and Wylie do much of the work in the final fight scene, Fievel is just as important. At the finale, Wylie gives him his own badge.

• Wylie Burp (James Stewart in his final film role) is the aging lawdog of Green River, Fievel's idol, and a caricature of the real Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp.

• Mama Mousekewitz (Erica Yohn)

• Tanya Mousekewitz (Cathy Cavadini) is Fievel's sister, (aged 13) who dreams of becoming a singer, and gets her wish thanks to Miss Kitty in Green River. Near the end, she looks at her reflection in the water and washes off her makeup, implying that she realizes she was a star in her own right all along. She also sings two of the movie's songs, "Dreams to Dream" and "The Girl You Left Behind".

• Papa Mousekewitz (Nehemiah Persoff)

• Tiger (Dom DeLuise) is the only cat friend of the Jewish-Russian mouse family. Throughout the movie, he is depicted as a wimp, being chased and bullied constantly by dogs, and revealed to be arachniphobic when he sees Chula for the first time. But with the help from Wylie Burp, Tiger later overcomes these fears, becoming more like a dog and taking on Chula after the spider threatens Miss Kitty.

• Miss Kitty (Amy Irving) is Tiger's zaftig girlfriend. She leaves Tiger early on to go down to Green River, looking for a cat who's more like a dog. She clearly regrets this decision later, in a scene where she remembers all the good times she had with Tiger. Although she is seen in the company of Cat R. Waul, she never shows any evil intentions or disliking of mice, just like Tiger. In fact, it is implied that she was never even aware of Cat R. Waul's plots in the first place. In the end, she is seen happily in the arms of Tiger after he saves her from Chula.

• Cat R. Waul (John Cleese) is Fievel's arch-nemesis and the main antagonist of the film. He is an aristocratic British cat who plans on exploiting the mice to do labor and then eating them. He has many henchmen and must force them to refrain from eating the mice at all times, or else his plan will fail. Although a convincing conman, he shows that he is not the world's greatest actor in an early scene where he attempts to do a southern accent (which consists of him awkwardly throwing "y'all" (which, being a cat, he pronounces "yowl") in at the ends of his sentences). Although later thrown out of Green River, he returns in the follow-up series, though his only accomplice here is Chula.

• Chula the Tarantula (Jon Lovitz) is Fievel's other arch-nemesis, and Cat R. Waul's main sidekick. Several times throughout the movie, he attacks Fievel and comes very close to catching him at a few points, but is easily outwitted by the crafty mouse. He later takes Miss Kitty hostage, but is thrashed by an angry Tiger and is tossed out of town along with the cats. He is the only other returning villain in the follow-up series, along with Cat R. Waul.

Production

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West was the first production for Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio, a collaboration of Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment, whose offices were located in London. There, over 250 crew members worked on the project, which began in May 1989. At the time, Amblimation was also developing We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, and a screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which never saw completion.

Owing to creative differences, Don Bluth parted ways with Steven Spielberg, with whom he had directed the original American Tail, as well as the first of 13 Land Before Time films. With no Bluth in sight for the sequel, Spielberg instead relied on Phil Nibbelink, a former Disney animator, and Simon Wells, the grandson of science-fiction author H.G. Wells, to direct the project.

The Frankie Laine song Rawhide is played at the tumbleweed scene of this film, although the version used is from The Blues Brothers. This sequence was designed and laid-out by an uncredited Alan Friswell, a special effects expert and stop-motion animator who was employed by the studio at the time, and is better-known for his work on the Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos computer game, Magic and Mayhem (1998), as well as his many model creations and magazine articles for publications such as Fortean Times, among others.

In addition to a new voice actress, the character of Tanya was heavily redesigned as well. Tiger had minor changes, as does Yasha (the baby) and Fievel looks slightly different. James Horner returned to write the score to the movie, reusing old themes and introducing new ones.

Release

Fievel Goes West was released in the United States on November 22, 1991 — same day as Disney's Beauty and the Beast, was released. Beauty was the better-received universally, grossing over $110 million and eventually becoming a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars.

Commercially, West grossed less than its predecessor; it opened in fourth place with $3,435,625 despite being shown on nearly 1,700 theaters and eventually made just over $22 million domestically, and $40 million worldwide, for a total of $65,435,625.. By contrast, the original Tail made $47.4 million in the U.S. in 1986, a record at the time for non-Disney animated feature., and a further $36 million worldwide, for a total of $84 million.

Reception

Critcal reception was generally mixed. The staff of Halliwell's Film Guide gave Fievel Goes West two stars out of four, with this comment: "Enjoyable and high-spirited animated film that borrows plot and attitudes from classic Westerns."

Sequels and spinoffs

The sequel followed An American Tail and was followed by 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 (which some think retconned Fievel Goes West and Fievel's American Tails out of existence, though the two sequels actually take place before Fievel Goes West). Treasure of Manhattan Island begins with Fievel talking about a dream about moving out west, which suggests a retcon but could be foreshadowing as well.

In an all-too-brief shot during the Cat raid on the mice slums, Tony and Bridget are briefly seen careening into a sewer on a rollerskate with their son. This seems to suggest that Bridget and Tony had married by now and have a child together. Additionally, the two can be seen moving into an abandoned teapot, shortly after the mice arrive in the west. If so, it may be negated by the lack of any such children or the sequels after it.

Fievel later served as the mascot for Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio, appearing in its production logo. 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.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by James Horner and includes Dreams to Dream, which was nominated for a Golden Globe award. The song "Dreams to Dream" was based on a short instrumental piece from An American Tail.

The soundtrack quotes many classic western scores, from The Magnificent Seven to Aaron Copland's Rodeo: Hoe Down.

Track listing

1. "Dreams to Dream (Finale Version)" - Linda Ronstadt
2. "American Tail Overture (Main Title)"
3. "Cat Rumble"
4. "Headin' Out West"
5. "Way Out West"
6. "Green River/Trek Through the Desert"
7. "Dreams to Dream (Tanya's Version)" - Cathy Cavadini
8. "Building A New Town"
9. "Sacred Mountain"
10. "Reminiscing"
11. "The Girl You Left Behind" - Cathy Cavadini
12. "In Training"
13. "The Shoot-Out"
14. "A New Land/The Future"

Score cues left off the soundtrack

1. Tiger Chases the Train
2. Mouse Burger Plot
3. The Flying Aaaaah/Tiger’s Chase Continues
4. Puttin’ On the Ritz (Movie Version)
5. Two Old Friends Reunited
6. Rawhide - The Blues Brothers
7. Saloon Music
8. Wylie Burp/More Like a Dog
9. The Shoot-Out (Movie Version)
10. The River Returns/Celebration

See also

• List of animated feature-length films

External links

• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West at IMDb
• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West at AllMovie
• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West at Rotten Tomatoes
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• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West at Keyframe: The Animation Resource