Description

An American Tail.In 1885, Shostka, Russia, the Mousekewitzes—a Russian-Jewish family of mice—who live with a human family named Moskowitz are having a celebration of Hanukkah where Papa gives his hat to his son, Fievel, and tells of a wonderful place called America, where there are no cats. The celebration is interrupted when a battery of Cossacks ride through the village square in an arson attack and their cats likewise attack the village mice. In Hamburg, Germany, the Mousekewitzes board a tramp steamer headed for America. The crossing proves long and onerous, as well as the steamer being buffetted by the angry sea. During a storm, Fievel becomes separated from his family and washed overboard. Thinking he drowned, they proceed to New York City as planned, albeit depressed at his loss. Fievel, however, floats to America in a bottle and, after a pep talk from a French pigeon named Henri, embarks on a quest to find his family. He is waylaid by conman Warren T. Rat, who gains his trust and then sells him to a sweatshop. He escapes with Tony Toponi, a street-smart Italian mouse, and they join up with Bridget, an Irish mouse trying to rouse her fellow mice to stand up to cats. When a gang of them called the Mott Street Maulers attacks a mouse marketplace, the immigrant mice learn that the tales of a cat-free country are not true.