Search - An American Tail - The Treasure of Manhattan Island on DVD

Not bad at all!

Reuel C. Smith | Maryland | 02/24/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Ok. I honestly have to say that before I watched this film, I had some doubts and apprehensions. Ever since NIMH II I told myself that I would avoid sequels like the plague. I even THOUGHT that it was going to be NIMH II once again. But I hunkered down and tried to enjoy it and suprising as it sounds, I did! PLOT: Pretty okay as plot lines go. Everything is as it was put in the editorial review. Fievel and Tony stumble upon a treasure map, and instead find an underground Native American mouse civilization. Meanwhile, Papa Mousekewitz has to deal with the daily grind of late 19th century labor and finds the hope and courage that he thought he had lost. The movie has morals all right, but not forced into the viewer. It deals with fear and prejudice and mixes it with hope and dreams. It wasn't the most formulatic plotline in the world either. This was actually kindof original and well conceived. ANIMATION: The animation was one of the things that made me anxious before seeing it. Fortunatly, it was a familiar animation group that I've seen on Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. It wasn't Bluth, but still it was very well done for a direct-to-video. The animation itself makes up for the few toony gestures in the movie because I've seen it on Tiny Toons all the time. CHARACTERS: I'm glad they didn't ruin any of the characters for me. Fievel was way too cute in this one! Voice and all. Tanya was a plus on the character roster too. Her design was like that in the first movie and for that I'm grateful. NOT to say that I didn't like the Fievel Goes West model, but she's cuter in this design. They brought back Tony, who wasn't there for the second movie, so that's also a plus! He's pretty cool. I'm glad they didn't ruin Tiger, like a certain other company did to a certain crow in another sequel! He was more or less the same as he was in the first two movies, but didn't get very many lines though. The new characters didn't come off as formula, especially not the villians. Cholina was the best of the new characters. She was really sweet, especially on Fievel. MUSIC & SONGS: They just started with a song after viewing Mannhattan Harbor. Frankly, that song was quite relieving, because it's the sequel's way of saying, "there ARE songs in this!" But there were only three, and for this I'm grateful that Universal didn't saturate the sequel with them. The songs were pretty good, even the villians' song "Friends of the Working Mouse." "Anywhere in our Dreams," sung between Cholina and Fievel, was my favorite. They did use the music track from the first movie thought. At first this annoyed me, but they integrated it with their own track pretty well. Later, I welcomed the classic music along with the new. FINAL THOUGHTS: All in all, this was a pretty good movie for a direct to video sequel. It's a good movie that deserves a fair chance before judgement. YES the second movie was shrugged off as one of Fievel's dreams, but I think his innocence and cuteness makes up for that. It was neat that they kept all cats out of this movie except Tiger, so in that respect alone it probably is truer to the original movie. But again, see it for yourself. You may be as pleased as I am!"

An unoriginal American Tail!

Matthew G. McCollom | Santa Fe, NM | 07/29/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Plain & Simple- An American Tail & Fieval Goes West (1 & 2)...are two of the greatest cartoon movies to date...Why? Because of Director Don Bluth. i.e. (The Land Before Time.
The Original 1st Bluth movie surpasses all of the others.)
Stick with the originals - Only try'n to Help!"