Loooooooooove the Totoro picture with Finn and Jake!!!

I am Jewish so when I saw it, I loved it. One of my favorites. Roger and Ebert kinda hated it but they are tough critics and I am a softie. I sing somewhere out there all the time and I made myself a Fievel rainbow loom charm by scratch. I have a pet cat so I make fun of the line where they say that there are no cats in America:)

I think the only mouse I ever liked in this was Tony, at least I thought he was a more interesting character for his street smarts-type attitude of course they had to put that girl in there for him to gush over eventually (I wouldn’t knock her for not sounding Irish because she could be a first-gen native and wouldn’t have that accent like her parents may). Fievel’s dad was another great character, and I thought he was at least somewhat believable in his belief that Fievel was still alive despite feeling he had to move on from the loss. It’s true Tanya doesn’t get much to do here in this first film, aside from singing the tune with Fievel in that one part, but really, nothing else. She certainly gets fleshed out more in the sequel with putting her in a situation of being old enough to do something on her own like that. Strangely in the 3rd and 4th sequels (done by someone else at Universal) she’s practically back to square one again and ends up a secretary at a newspaper. I forgot the Mouskewitz’s had a third kid at all, but since he/she’s a baby, that’s as far as they’re concerned, though they really should’ve just stuck with two kids. Less said about Fievel, the better, I still think of that moment of him being late to get to the pier while trying to get his pants on. Bluth really loves giving us some excellently-drawn mouse butt here.

The themes and ideas expressed in this film is rather something you wouldn’t think of as a kid but it comes to you as a adult, the writers certainly did their homework on this. The only thing I knew as a 9 year old was how much that tune “Somewhere Out There” was constantly played on TV or on radio an awful lot. You couldn’t escape it (much like recently with Frozen’s “Let It Go” I suppose). The only other thing that comes to my mind (and the one time Fievel went against his family legacy) was to shill for a fast-food establishment and appear on some stockings that Christmas (the best whitewashing ever).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYQWkLRdk5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3IhayHDWvY

It’s true Bluth has those idiosyncrasies when it comes to what he thinks works in an animated film. An animator I know, Greg Duffell, once joked that according to Bluth, the best stories anyone could tell in animation was of a little lost child finding his way home. This theme first comes up in Bluth’s very first short, “Banjo the Woodpile Cat”, and manifests itself on later films like An American Tail, Land Before Time, and perhaps Titan AE as a later example (Of course there it’s a guy looking for a new place to live).

I suppose you guys’ll get to “Fievel Goes West” in due time (unless you have already and I just didn’t notice). The third and fourth sequels (now down by Universal’s own studio in the late 90’s) is passable, though I kinda liked the third one if only for the appearance of Dr. Dithering, though it also slams the second film for being a silly dream Fievel had one night, practically retconning everything back to New York.

Yeah, I was probably going to mention that as well, this one was still an indie job otherwise.

And you thank you for having told us!

His name was Mickey, Mickey O’Hare!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h-GJXiDpI0

I love that the body is in that classy Rigor mortis position when I keep thinking shouldn’t it already be inside a cat’s belly? That must’ve been an easy death to come out in one piece (unless he was stabbed).