Film

An American Tail

Name: An American Tail
Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family
Released: 1986
Cast: Phillip Glasser, Erica Yohn, Nehemiah Persoff, Amy Green, Christopher Plummer

Survival adventure

Don Bluth's 1986 answer to Disney gloss is a hand-drawn, hard-edged immigrant fable dressed as a children's cartoon: a Russian-Jewish mouse family flees persecution for a New York that turns out to be full of propaganda, poverty, and cats. It's funnier and sadder than memory suggests, anchored by 'Somewhere Out There' and a genuine ache about displacement that never talks down to kids.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you grew up on hand-drawn animation and still like a gentle, slightly melancholy story about a small creature finding its footing in a huge, unfamiliar city.

Skip it if the songs and sentimental swells come often, and if you need a brisk plot or sharp modern jokes, its old-fashioned pacing may feel slow.

What it asks of you: It runs eighty minutes and moves at a gentle clip, with lots of quiet stretches where the emotional weight sits in a child's worried face rather than in dialogue.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Land Before Time1988

Same studio, same year-adjacent heartbreak: Bluth's orphaned dinosaurs cross a hostile prehistoric world alone, with the same unashamed sorrow and startling darkness for a kids' film.

But It's even shorter and sadder — the constant peril and grief can be a lot for very young viewers.

Anastasia1997

Bluth again, now for Fox, telling another lost-family story about fleeing persecution for a new country, wrapped in lush animation and a proper swooning romance.

But It fictionalizes real historical horror — the Romanov murders — for a fairy-tale plot, which some find queasy rather than charming.

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West1991

The direct sequel, swapping tenement New York for the frontier — same family, same voices, now facing coyotes instead of cats in a broad, colourful Western pastiche.

But It trades the original's melancholy and historical weight for slapstick and spectacle; the stakes feel thinner throughout.

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from An American Tail

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Immigrant1917

An American Tail's whole plot could be a footnote to this: the same voyage by ship, the same Ellis Island terror, the same insistence that comedy and hardship share a frame — Bluth was drawing straight from this well.

Chaplin's own immigrant story, made when Ellis Island still smelled of salt air: a silent short blending slapstick with real hunger and bureaucratic cruelty, tender and funny at once.

But It's a black-and-white silent short around 25 minutes long, a big tonal and technical leap for anyone expecting a full colour feature.

The Secret of NIMH1982

Bluth's first post-Disney feature and his darkest: a widowed mouse mother navigates a genuinely eerie, occult-tinged world to save her family, animated with astonishing texture and dread.

But It's considerably scarier and stranger than An American Tail — more horror-adjacent than family adventure in places.

Coco2017

A modern take on the same idea — heritage, separation, and the ache of being cut off from home — told through Pixar's polish and a Día de los Muertos setting.

But It's a different emotional register entirely, more sentimental crescendo than melancholic ballad, building to a hard tearjerker finale.

The Rescuers1977

Disney's own small-creatures-big-world adventure, sending two mice across land and sea to rescue a kidnapped orphan girl, with scrappy underdog charm and genuine menace.

But It's gentler and less politically pointed — no immigration story here, just a straightforward rescue caper.

The Prince of Egypt1998

Another animated exodus story, epic in scale, about a persecuted people fleeing toward a promised land, treated with unusual gravity and gorgeous, painterly animation.

But It's aimed a notch older, with heavier religious and historical content younger kids may find slow or intense.

Balto1995

A turn-of-the-century animal adventure with real historical roots — the 1925 Nome serum run — following an outcast dog-wolf hybrid proving himself heroic against the odds.

But It's a much simpler hero's-journey story, without the layered melancholy or immigrant subtext of An American Tail.

Charlotte's Web1973

A quieter, gentler animal-family classic about friendship and mortality, animated in a softer, old-fashioned style, and just as unafraid to let children feel real sadness.

But It's slower-paced and less adventurous — barnyard drama rather than continent-crossing quest, best for patient younger viewers.

Persepolis2007

Same premise stripped of the mouse costume: a child displaced by persecution, narrating exile with humour that never quite covers the grief — Fievel's journey grown up and made explicitly political.

An animated memoir of a girl fleeing revolution and war for a strange new country, told in stark black-and-white with dry wit and real anger beneath the charm.

But It's subtitled, adult in its politics and content, and carries none of the musical uplift or tidy resolution of a family cartoon.

Watership Down1978

Both use animals as stand-ins for displaced people fleeing catastrophe, but where An American Tail softens the danger with song, Watership Down lets the violence and dread sit right on the surface.

Rabbits instead of mice, but the same engine: a small band of refugees flees the destruction of their home, crossing a hostile landscape while the world above tries to kill them.

But It is genuinely brutal for an animated film — bloodier and bleaker than almost anything aimed at children, with no reassuring bow at the end.