Netflix And Chill: An American Tail (1986)

Apologies, but some minor spoilers follow, because An American Tail ended up having some surprisingly relevant plot points that I really want to bring up.

Let me tell you a story. It's all about a family of immigrants who flee a dangerous home country to seek shelter somewhere they think is free of their enemies. The journey is a tough one, leading to one child being split from the family. That child arrives in America, initially befriended by someone else who has come to the country from elsewhere, and knows how much it can give to people seeking a new life there. Unfortunately, the next person the child meets is not so good. The optimistic immigrant is soon surrounded by perils, including a self-serving and thoughtless politician and, perhaps most relevantly, someone who seems to be helping "his own kind" until it is revealed that they are in fact one of the dangerous predators they claim to be able to keep away from the vulnerable, for a fee.

Sound familiar? I'm sure many people have been in that position, and it's probably the backdrop to many news stories that we have read in the past few years, whether we realise it or not. And, yes, it is the main plot of An American Tail, an animated film that focuses on the perilous odyssey of a little mouse named Fievel (voiced by Phillip Glasser). This was a film I had no interest in for many years. As a child it just looked a bit too bland for me, as an adult it just, well, still looked too bland. I was very wrong.

Directed by Don Bluth, this is a beautiful and sweet story that has enough to keep children entertained, and often keep them quite tense, while also sketching out a familiar backstory for many families who managed to uproot their lives in the past and head over to make a new life in the USofA. It's a lot more optimistic and upbeat than a film made today about those experiences might be but that doesn't make it any less effective. The message is all about the risks and opportunities, the strength needed to succeed in such an endeavour, and the ways in which immigrants helped build America, literally, and continue to do so. That may all be intentional (and considering the people able to input anything to the central premise, especially Steven Spielberg, I suspect so), maybe it's not, but it's there anyway.

The animation is quite lovely, often on a par with the most famous animation studio in the world, and the script, written by Judy Fruedberg and Tony Geiss, is an enjoyable mix of cute and smart, with the former being inevitable when you consider how adorable little Fievel is.

The voice cast are a mixed bag, all picked more for their suitability to certain roles than for their immediate recognition. While I will say that I am glad we get names involved such as Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, and Christopher Plummer, I will also say that Glasser is absolutely wonderful as the little mouse at the centre of events, and the moment in which his childish voice, and one other, amateurishly sings a rendition of "Somewhere Out There" is probably the sweetest thing I have seen in a movie in quite some time. There aren't lots of other songs but the ones that you do get are very good, and you also get a lovely score from James Horner to help things along.

I recommend this to everyone who enjoys a good animated movie, especially now that it has become surprisingly relevant with the some of the main plot points, and I hope to now catch the first sequel at some point in the near future.

8/10

You can buy it here.
Americans can buy it here.

Prime Time: School Spirit (1985)

The people responsible for School Spirit didn't have a lengthy career in the movie business, and that's something we should all be thankful for. Because this is a terrible movie. It's not funny enough as a comedy, you can't care about a main character who spends so much of the first half of the film trying to lech on as many women as he can, and the special effects are weak.

Tom Nolan plays Billy Batson, a student we first see trying to seduce the beautiful Judith Hightower (Elizabeth Foxx). It's all going well until she asks him if he has protection. Telling her to stay right where she is, Billy rushes off in his car to get a condom from somewhere. And as he is rushing back, condom in his possession, he crashes. And dies. That's when his dead uncle (Pinky Batson, played by John Finnegan) appears to take him away. Billy doesn't want to go. He still wants to finish his date, and things get even more interesting when he realises that he can turn visible and invisible with a little waving gesture over his head. Cue a number of "fun" escapades that see Billy following women around and seeing them naked.

Look, I get it, the 1980s were a very different time. Attitudes weren't the same as today, especially when it came to any aspects of equality, sexuality, and sex. I can watch a lot of movies from this era and still find enough to make me chuckle. You might judge me for chuckling, but I will chuckle nonetheless. School Spirit, however, didn't make me chuckle. It has all of the worst aspects of the decade packed into its runtime without any of the saving graces. If the main characters had been better then this might have worked, if the gags had been funnier then this might have worked. If the rest of the storyline had been remotely interesting then this might have worked. None of those things were given enough time and attention.

Writer Geoffrey Baere does the bare minimum (no pun intended) to give a plot for the main character to run through. The focus is on nudity for the first half until things turn into a standard "get revenge upon the main authority figure" second half, and neither half works. Director Alan Holleb goes along with the weak script, happy to add nothing to the proceedings until he needs the camera to linger over the naked bodies of young women (sometimes showering, and even sleeping on one occasion, the creepiest scene of them all).

Nolan is clearly too old for his main role, a fact not compensated for by his lack of charisma and acting prowess, and Finnegan can't overcome the fact that his character is written in a way that makes him far too sleazy to like. Foxx makes an impression, thanks to her fine looks, and I wish I could namecheck all of the other women onscreen who were given thankless roles (but I don't have the time or space here). Larry Linville is okay as President Grimshaw, there are okay turns from Roberta Collins, Nick Segal, Frank Mugavero, and Toni Hudson (the typical, from this decade anyway, secondary female character who is actually a lot cuter than the many women being pushed onscreen ahead of her). It's also worth mentioning Danièle Arnaud, who plays Madeleine, a character I resented almost immediately. I can't tell if this was due to Arnaud's weak acting or the fact that she feel for such a repulsive main character.

There are many better comedies to pick from the 1980s, even if you're still after the lowbrow mix of gags and nudity that so many of them dealt in. School Spirit was one I had never heard of before, and it's one I hope many other people never come across.

3/10

IF you want to seek out the R1 disc then you can torture yourself here.