An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

**An American Tail: Fievel Goes West** is a 1991 American-British animated western comedy film and sequel to "An American Tail," directed by Phil Nibbelink & Simon Wells, which was released on November 22, 1991 by Universal Pictures.

## Plot

Some time after the Mousekewitz family have settled in America, they find that they are still having problems with the threat of cats which makes them eager to try another home out in the west, where they are promised that mice and cats live in peace.

Unfortunately, the one making this claim is an oily con artist named Cat R. Waul who is intent on his own sinister plan.

## Voice Cast

* Phillip Glasser as Fievel Mousekewitz
* Cathy Cavadini as Tanya Mousekewitz
* Dom DeLuise as Tiger
* Amy Irving as Miss Kitty
* James Stewart as Wylie Burp
* John Cleese as Cat R. Waul
* Jon Lovitz as T.R. Chula
* Nehemiah Persoff as Papa Mousekewitz
* Erica Yohn as Mama Mousekewitz

## Production

In April of 1988, the sequel to "An American Tail" was put into pre-production by David Kirschner (under the title "An American Tail II") after he finished producing Child's Play.

When announcing the project that same month, Kirschner summarized that Fievel will *"fight the cat-tle barons. It's like a John Ford western with Jewish mice."* He began pre-production as Spielberg was setting up filming for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in Europe.

Kirschner was not involved in the production and post-production, and admitted in 1993 that he disliked "Fievel Goes West" as *"entertainment without character."*

The screenplay was written by Flint Dille, who was led to the position by writing for Steven Spielberg's "Tiny Toon Adventures."

Spielberg produced the live-action animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was the top grossing motion picture of 1988.

As a way to keep the movie's animators working due to the closure of Richard Williams Animation, Spielberg formed Amblimation (a collaboration of Universal City Studios and Amblin Entertainment) whose offices were located in London.

"Fievel Goes West" was its first production, and over 250 crew members from 15 different nations worked on the project starting May 1989.

At the time, Amblimation was also developing the films We're Back! A Dinosaur Story, Balto and a screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" (which was never made).

In December of 1988, Universal announced that they would release an animated film every eighteen months and begin production on An American Tail II in early 1989.

Don Bluth (who had partnered with Spielberg on both the original film and The Land Before Time) was set to direct and have Sullivan Bluth Studios provide the animation. However, they parted ways due to creative differences. As Bluth explained, *"The business deal wasn't such that it helped our company."*

With no Don Bluth in sight for the sequel, Spielberg instead relied on ex-Disney animator Phil Nibbelink and ex-Richard Williams storyboard artist Simon Wells, (the great-grandson of science-fiction author H. G. Wells) to direct the project.

Nibbelink and Wells had both previously worked with Steven Spielberg as supervising animators on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

Bluth stated in April of 1992 that he regretted his decision, admitting that he disliked the final product of Fievel Goes West and *"maybe we could've helped that film a little more."*

With John Cleese as the first choice for Cat R. Waul, he was approached in 1989 by one of the film's producers at what Cleese vaguely called *"the Italian Oscars."*

He accepted the offer based on his enjoyment of the first American Tail and *"I love sound studios anyway – there's none of the hassle and boredom and time wasting you get in television."*

John Cleese was paid his lowest fee in ten years for the role which made him very unwilling to publicize his involvement with "Fievel Goes West."

According to Cathy Cavadini, there was another woman initially planned to voice Tanya, but she left the project, so Cavadini replaced her.

Steven Spielberg met Stewart at a party asking him to voice Wylie Burp, and all of Stewart's lines were recorded in ten days; his last involvement in a Western was in "The Shootist."

John Bluth's departure from the project resulted in the animation of "Fievel Goes West" lacking the Disney-isms of the first film's animation. Instead, its animation is faster pace and contains more elements of Warner Bros. cartoons.

Steven Spielberg instructed his animators to take on a "live-action" method to animating the film, where the characters are affected by parts of the environment such as lighting.

Spielberg also directed for the camera to constantly move in sequences such as the sewer ride sequence and a 360-degree pan shot of the film's desert vista. These types of crane and dolly shots replicated certain shots in Spielberg's "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and were considered groundbreaking for the time.

Apart from one computer-generated shot of the valley's ground, all of the film was hand-drawn animated; and the process was so intensive that it took at least one week to complete a minute of animation, around sixty artists to paint approximately 230,000 cels and a week for a single animator to finish three seconds of animation.

As "Fievel Goes West" was a parody of Western films, the animators heavily studied the works of John Ford and Sergio Leone.

The voices were recorded over a 10-day period at Interlock Studios (now Larson Studios) at Crossroads of the World in Los Angeles in 1989; ten takes were tracked for each actor at varying speeds and phrasing.

The voice actors were videotaped during their recording sessions, and the animators used the footage as reference for moving the characters.

The biggest focus was on keeping Cat R. Waul's movement similar to his voice actor's while recording in the studio, as the directors wanted him to feel like John Cleese instead of just a cat voiced by him.

Nancy Beiman originally worked as a regular animator on Fievel Goes West, but became a supervisor on the project six months after she entered Amblimation.

While not assigned to supervise Miss Kitty's animation, she asked for the position and got it. She enjoying working on Kitty for Irving's Mae West-esque delivery and the "scatterbrained dialogue" giving her freedom in animating the character.

## Box Office

"An American Tail: Fievel Goes West" grossed $3,435,625 during its opening weekend. Overall, it grossed $40,766,041 worldwide.

## Critical Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West" has an approval rating of 57% based on 14 reviews with an average rating of 5.80\10.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a three-in-a-half star rating, stating: *"There is nothing really the matter with “An American Tail: Fievel Goes West,” except that it is not inspired with an extra spark of imagination in addition to its competent entertainment qualities."*

Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it *"an animated squeak-quel full of fuzzy creatures and bouncy tunes,"* adding: *"This story isn't as consistently entertaining as the 1986 original, but then what 3-year-old is going to notice."*

Also writing for the Washington Post, Kevin McManus said: *"The hour between the imagined and actual shootouts is packed tight with breakneck chases, narrow escapes, gags, puns, snappy wisecracks and witty rejoinders. So brisk is the action, and so few are the languid sentimental sequences, that you don't have a spare moment to think about the flimsiness of the plot."*

Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle wrote: *"There's nothing really likable about it, though there's nothing patently dislikable about it either."*

Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times stated: *"Although the animation is generally fluid, the characters don’t really do much acting: Their expressions and movements don’t communicate nuances of thought and emotion. The most effective work in the film involves tricky point-of-view shots, such as inside a rolling tumbleweed."*