An American Tail

Animated / Family

1986 / 80 minutes
RATING: 9/10

This is the immigrant experience, set to music, and seen through the eyes of a 19th century Jewish animated mouse family who decide to come to America after they’d been driven out of their Russian village by rampaging Cossack cats.

I should end the review right there; what more do you need? But I can’t help myself, because this is as brilliant as it is utterly unique! After escaping the Cossack cats, the Mousekewitz family takes a slow boat to their new land, surrounded by fellow immigrants from other countries. All of them have sad stories to share, usually involving how a cat ate their papa, or mama, or in the case of one Irish lad, his one true love (and all that was left of her was her tail!).

After each story is shared the mice join together to sing of how much better they expect it to be in their new country:

But there are no cats in America,
And the streets are paved with cheese
Oh, there are no cats in America,
So set your mind at ease!

They’re all so very hopeful, and that’s when the storm hits. Little Fievel, the Mousekewitz’s boy, is washed overboard and presumed lost, and his family is forced to continue on without him. Thankfully (I don’t think I could have taken it otherwise) Fievel has survived. He’s battered, but unbroken, and travels the rest of the way in a bottle, arriving only a short time after his family. Will he be able to find them? There are so many mice in New York! And it doesn’t help that they aren’t even looking for him.

Fievel soon discover that there are cats in America. Fortunately there are also mice here willing to fight for their freedoms. So it is, that Fievel, and unbeknownst to him, his family too, help with an audacious plan to force the cats onto a boat heading for Hong Kong. But even as they work on the same plan, Fievel and his family never quite cross paths. Fievel is making friends though, whether it’s a French pigeon helping with the construction of the Statue of Liberty, or a streetwise teen mouse who has Fievel’s back, or even a cat who loves broccoli a lot better than mouse burgers.

Cautions

There’s a lot of cats chasing mice throughout the whole story, and these cats are mean and scary. That, along with a brief counter Fievel has with some creepy cockroaches, make this fare for children ten and up.

Also, theres’s a minor character, the politician Honest John, who always seems drunk. Fortunately, he’s onscreen only briefly, and only a few times.

Conclusion

I was struck by how this had, for me, the feel of a 1940s wartime flick. Just like in those films, this celebrates America as a beacon of hope. The darkness it opposes isn’t Nazis this time, but something not too different; An American Tail was made during the Cold War, when the USSR was at its most intimidating, and it’s no coincidence that the main characters are coming from an oppressive Russia to find opportunity in America. While the Mousekewitzs discover that the streets aren’t paved with cheese – that’s too good to be true – there were opportunities in this new land that didn’t exist in the old one. An American Tail is a surprisingly nuanced celebration of the immigrant, showing that it wasn’t easy for those early settlers, whether man or mouse.

So who’d enjoy this? I suspect it’s so unique, so unusual, that excellent though it is, it might not appeal to the whole family. A Jewish Russian American mouse musical? Yup, that is odd, and maybe even weird.

But it really couldn’t be more wonderful!

Condorman

Family

90 minutes / 1981
RATING: 7/10

When comic book creator Woody Wilkins gets the chance to help out the CIA he jumps at it. But he gets a little too into the role, telling his Russian contact – his beautiful Russian contact – that he is a long-time secret agent with the code name "Condorman." When some toughs try to grab the Russian, Woody makes use of his quick wits and astonishing luck to fight them all off. That so impresses the Russian agent that when she later decides to defect she tells the CIA she'll only go if they send their "top agent" Condorman to come pick her up.

Woody is willing to help again...but with a few conditions. He'll go, so long as the CIA agree to give him a few special tools he's dreamed up that come straight out of his superhero comics!

Condorman came out in 1981 and got some horrible reviews. But those were from people who misunderstood what sort of film this really was. As the film's tagline reads, this is "an action adventure romantic comedy spy story" and to that you could add, "Cold War, superhero parody!" If you take it seriously, yes, this is dreadful. But you aren't supposed to take it seriously. As a parody it is hokey, cheesy, goofy, slapstick fun – the sort of film any ten-year-old boy would love, with lots of gadgets, explosions and cardboard cutout villains.

CAUTIONS

This is a kinder gentler superhero film than most anything you can find being made nowadays. The only cautions are of a minor sort.

The beautiful Russian agent wears a rather clingy dress on the poster above, but that is more risqué than anything in the film. In one scene she changes clothes behind a dressing screen and is shown naked from the shoulders up.

There are a lot of fist fights, car chases, boat chases, and explosions. All of it is of the comic variety, with no blood seen. Ten-year-olds wouldn't be impacted but younger children, particularly those under 6, may find it too much.

CONCLUSION

One reviewer, John Corry of The New York Times called Condorman "painless and chaste" and for adults that's exactly what it is – painless. But for kids, particularly preteen boys, this is one rousing action adventure.

You can check out the trailer and rent it online at Amazon.com by clicking here or buy the DVD here.

Song of Survival

Documentary

1985 (2004) / 58 min
Rating: 7/10

By early 1942 the Dutch East Indies were under Japanese control and all Westerners were being interned in camps. It would be three-and-a-half years before they were freed.

Song of Survival chronicles how after being held captive for 18 months a group of women in one camp – Dutch, Australian and British – came up with the morale-boosting idea of performing the works of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. The problem was, they had no instruments...so all parts were performed vocally! The choir's principle organizer, Margaret Dryburgh, had an extraordinary memory for music and, as we hear in the documentary,

she had no sheet music, no instruments, but she was able to recall the melodies and harmonies of over two dozen orchestral and piano themes and arrange them for 4-part women's voice.

The founding of this vocal orchestra serves as the framework for the much larger story of what it was like in these Indonesian internment camps. Of the almost 100,000 non-Asians who were interned many died of malnourishment, and untreated diseases. The Japanese captors were often brutal, and generally uncaring.

So who would want to see this? Anyone with an interest in history, World War II (and particularly the Dutch perspective), music, or simply stories of courage, will appreciate this story.