An American Tail
1986 animated film directed by Don Bluth
An American Tail is a 1986 animated musical comedy-drama film directed by Don Bluth and written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. It stars the voices of Cathianne Blore, Dom DeLuise, John Finnegan, Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Madeline Kahn, Pat Musick, Nehemiah Persoff, Christopher Plummer, Neil Ross, Will Ryan, Hal Smith, and Erica Yohn. Set in the late 19th century, the story follows the Mousekewitzes, a family of Russian-Jewish mice emigrating from the Russian Empire to the United States for freedom. Fievel, the youngest of the Mousekewitz family, gets lost and must find a way to reunite with them.
Production on An American Tail commenced in December 1984 and was originally conceived as a television special; executive producer Steven Spielberg felt it had potential as a feature film, and asked Bluth to "make [him] something pretty like [he] did in NIMH." The film was animated at Sullivan Bluth Studios, with James Horner composing the film's score and writing original songs.
An American Tail was theatrically released in the United States on November 21, 1986, by Universal Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing $85 million worldwide on a $9 million budget. The success spawned a franchise, including a theatrical sequel, a television series, and two sequels released on home video.
Plot
In 1885 Shostka, Russian Empire, the Mousekewitzes are a Russian-Jewish family of mice who live with a human family named Moskowitz. While celebrating Hanukkah, Papa gives his kashket to his son, Fievel, and tells him about the United States, a country in which he believes there are no cats.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1134678. VIAF identifies the subject as 662151002096430280002. The Library of Congress control number is n88619738. 4 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1984 and 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “An American Tail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.