Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 117

JFlLM REVIEW THE HARTFORD COURANT "AN AMERICAN TAIL" THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20, 1986 Tail' Has Wondrous Animation, Heart-Tugging Story By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON Courant Film Critic AmWin Entertainment In 'VUi American Tail' Papa MoiiMkew Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah Steven Spielberg joins with master animator Eton Bluth to present a lavishly illustrated family feature with an unfortunately cutesy title: "An American Tail" This chronicle of the travails of a family of Russian-Jewish immigrant mice named Mousekewitz suffers from some of the same problems that beset "Rags," a recent Broadway musical covering more or less the same territory. But thanks to the sometimes breathtaking quality of Bluth's artistry, this "Rodents in Rags" rises above a sometimes mundane and episodic tale of a Pinocchio lost in little old New York. Like "Rags," "An American Tail" is a too-obvious and self-conscious attempt to create a sequel to "Fiddler on the Roof." Bluth's film even contains a fiddling father, Papa Mousekewitz, growled sweetly by Nehemiah Per-soff in a Zero Mostel manner. The story opens with a Cossack attack on a Russian village, similar to the raid that razes Anatevka in "Fiddler." There is also a flavor of the Bock-Harnick songs for "Fiddler" in "There Are No Cats in America," the first tune by pop songwriters Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann and film composer James Horner.

The rather hackneyed notes are offset by the look of the film, which is anything but d6ja vu. Even more than in his rural "The Secret of. NIMH," Bluth builds on the classic animation of the great days of Walt Disney. His handling of the attack of the fiercely mustachioed Cossack cats boasts editing that would spellbind the great Russian master of montage, Sergei Eisenstein. And Bluth and his animators outdo even the fury of the attack sequence with a storm at sea during the long voyage to America.

While the attack scenes end with hot flames devouring the Russian village, the ocean hurricane passage uses a huge, malevolent Neptune to drive the raging waters. The tempest separates the hero of the story, a cocky little fellow named Fievel, from Papa, Mama, Tanya and Baby Mousekewitz. When the family disembarks at Castle Garden, Fievel arrives by bottle at the Statue of Liberty, under construction in the harbor. Here he meets a French pigeon, sung by Christopher Plummer a la Chevalier in the jolly if derivative, Gallic-accented "Never Say Never." From then on, "An American Tail" splits evenly between "Rags" and "Pinocchio." There are sweatshops, Tammany Hall mouse pols (including a cliched and insulting bibulous Irishman, Honest John), and a wealthy German-Jewish dowager, Gussie Mau-sheimer, voiced by Madeline Kahn as a variation on her Lili von Shtupp in "Blazing Saddles." Like Pinocchio, Fievel searches for his family, drawn by a fiddler's tone in one finely animated sequence that has him tumbling down a grammophone horn. At last he finds Lampwick, an Italian street tough named Tony Toponi read by Pat Musick in an imitation of Ralph Macchio.

He also has a run-in with a gang of hoodlum cats, who imprison him in a bird cage just as Stromboli did Pinocchio. But Fievel finds that even felines can be nice when a dumb but loveable Tiger, amusingly voiced by Dom DeLuise, befriends and frees him. Film Review AN AMERICAN TAIL, Directed by Don Bluth; screenplay by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss, based on a story by David Kirschner, Freudberg and Geiss; created by Kirschner; music composed by James Horner; songs by Cynthia Weil, Horner and Barry Mann; designed and story-boarded by Bluth; edited by Dan Molina; produced by Bluth, John Pomeroy and Gary Goldman; executive producers, Steven Spielberg, David Kirschner, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. A Universal Pictures release of a Steven Spielberg presentation of an Amblin Entertainment production, opening Friday at Showcase Cinemas, East Hartford. Running time: 81 minutes.

Characters' Voices Bridget Cathianne Btore Tiger Dom DeLuise Warren T. Rat John Finnegan Fievel Mousekewitz Phillip Glasser Tanya Mousekewitz Amy Green Gussie Mausheimer Madeline Kahn Tony Toponi Pat Musick Papa Mousekewitz Nehemiah Persotf Henri Christopher Plummer Honest John Neil Ross Digit Will Ryan Mama Mousekewitz Erica Yohn Excellent; Very Good; Good; Fain Poor "An American Tail" twitches fitfully on its way to its inventive, suspensef ul climax and blissed-out ending. But the sights and most of the sounds are always eye-filling and occasionally thrilling. The mouse's-eye views of old Manhattan are stunningly rendered, as are the bird's-eye panoramas. And Horner's score has sweep and splendor.

Though not up to the level of the greatest of the Disney features, "An American Tail" is an often marvelous cinematic gift for the holidays. Ra ted this film con tains a few sequences that may frighten small children together with the old upsetting Disney theme of children separated from their parents. Tiger, a cat, wipes away a tear whan he leant that Fievel has lost hi family..