Line #21 YMMV/AnAmericanTailFievelGoesWest


1	* AngstWhatAngst: An EnforcedTrope; the writers wanted to avoid any angst and pathos and keep things LighterAndSofter (also DenserAndWackier) in order to distance it from the first movie (which is probably one reason why Tanya gets tomatoes thrown at her for singing "Somewhere Out There"). The example that perhaps stands out most is the nonchalant reaction Fievel's family has after Fievel falls off the train; we saw plenty of Fievel's family mourning him in the first film already, and it might have been redundant to dwell on them grieving again -- though a child stranded in the desert is a far more dire situation he'd ever been in in New York.
2	** Could be justified by the fact that this time, they at least knew Fievel was alive and therefore had faith that he would eventually find his way back to them just like he did before, but still…
3	* AssPull: Fievel somehow turning his cap inside out into a cowboy hat, and back again [[BookEnds at the ending]]. Awesome as it is, it is never alluded to in the first film and just serves the plot and tone of the sequel.
4	* AwardSnub: "Dreams to Dream"—especially with the finale version once again by Music/LindaRonstadt—is so beloved that people take notice of it getting a UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe nomination (the movie's only nomination for anything anywhere), but not an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination. That said, much like it dominated the Box Office at about the same time as this movie’s release, ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' dominated the Best Original Song category too.
5	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The whole soundtrack to ''Fievel Goes West'' is great, with Music/JamesHorner returning to nail the Western feel and Cathy Cavadini's singing often being considered the highlight. "Dreams to Dream" stands out as an AwardBaitSong easily on par with "Somewhere Out There", if not superior.
6	** "Way out West" is often considered ''way'' better than "No Cats in America," incorporating the sounds of the locomotive as its drumbeat.
7	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
8	** Fievel gets sent away from the Indian mice, bouncing on a tumbleweed. While this happens, he is bouncing all the way back to the town while random critters sing "Rawhide" by the Blues Brothers.
9	** Tiger dancing to "Puttin' on the Ritz" with a skeleton. Funny as hell, yes, but whaa--?
10	*** This one might be chalked up to Tiger still being a bit cookoo from the heat; he '''had''' been in the desert for a little too long.
11	* BrokenBase:
12	** Opinions are nearly evenly divided on whether ''Fievel Goes West'', with its DenserAndWackier tone, was impressively an EvenBetterSequel or [[{{Sequelitis}} an embarrassment to all the first movie stood for]]. The fact that, unlike other Bluth films, ''An American Tail'' ended with a SequelHook and was actually intended to have a sequel did help swing opinions in its favor when it was announced.
13	** Fans have debated the canon status of this film for quite some time. The third movie seems to imply that it was AllJustADream, but it's vague enough that it can be interpreted as a mere shout-out.
14	** A third group of fans also see it as non-canon, not because of the dream but because Creator/DonBluth was not involved. However, while Bluth was responsible for the first movie's gloomier atmosphere, he did not have a lot of creative input, most of which went to Spielberg and writer David Kirschner, who ''did'' return for the sequel.
15	** The Tanya/Waul fan pairing, which people either love or loathe.
16	* ContestedSequel: Fans of ''Fievel Goes West'' argue it is better than [[WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail the first movie]] because it's [[LighterAndSofter not as relentlessly dark]] and heavy focus on the secondary characters offers a more memorable supporting cast (including Creator/JohnCleese playing a villain). Fans of the original argue that making the sequel more light-hearted completely took away what made the first movie so great in the first place. That the sequel lacked Creator/DonBluth's involvement and feels radically different in art style and tone doesn't help.
17	* DracoInLeatherPants: Cat R. Waul to his fangirls, especially the ones who ship him with Tanya.
18	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Tanya seems to be way more popular among the fandom than Fievel himself, as is Cat R. Waul. For the latter, being voiced by Creator/JohnCleese helps.
19	* EthnicScrappy: The Native American mice are practically a culmination of [[HollywoodNatives every]] [[BraidsBeadsAndBuckskins outdated]] Native American stereotype one can imagine. Not helping matters is that, unlike other [[WesternAnimation/MelodyTime similar]] [[WesternAnimation/PeterPan depictions]] of Native Americans, which are grandfathered thanks to ValuesDissonance, the film was released in 1991, a time in which society was moving past these old stereotypes.
20	** Though for what it's worth, [[WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTailTheTreasureOfManhattanIsland the next film]] gave a ''much'' more agreeable depiction, surprisingly enough. The point being that, when one also considers the [[AllJustADream controversial way]] that movie retconned this one, one almost suspects that [[AuthorsSavingThrow it was made specifically to apologize for this movie]].
21	* HarsherInHindsight: Though he didn't die for a few more years, this was [[Creator/JimmyStewart Jimmy Stewart's]] final role, and the ending includes his character, Wylie Burp, walking off into the sunset, with Fievel following. Not only that, but his final lines have some subtle self-projection about his twilight years:
22	-->'''Wylie Burp:''' One man’s sunset is another man’s dawn. I don’t know what’s out there beyond those hills; but if you ride yonder, head up, eyes steady, heart open, I think one day you’ll find you’re the hero you’ve been looking for.
23	* JustHereForGodzilla: Be honest, you were more invested in Tanya’s story than you were Fievel’s. Her redesign and [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic Cathy Cavadini’s vocals]] definitely help in this regard.
24	** That, or Creator/JohnCleese [[EvilIsHammy hamming it up]] as Cat R. Waul.
25	** And of course there are those who are there to hear Jimmy Stewart's final performance before his death.
26	* MagnificentBastard: [[BigBad Cat R. Waul]] lures dozens of mice families to Green River on the promises it is a peaceful frontier where cats and mice live in peace. Waul has his cats [[VillainWithGoodPublicity put on a facade]] of civility to convince the mice to help them build up Green River for them as a labor force, and then plans to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness kill them all once the cat saloon is complete]]. Though Fievel and his friends defeat Waul and send him off on a train, in the animated series [[HesBack Waul returns to Green River]], and despite his lack of resources continues scheming to exploit or eat the mice however he can manage, becoming Fievel's ArchEnemy who almost gets his jaws around him more than once.
27	* MemeticMolester: It's not hard to see Cat R. Waul as one too considering the creepy undertones between him and Tanya (a [[VagueAge supposedly]] teenage girl even if you factor in ValuesDissonance).
28	* MemeticMutation:
29	** Dancing Buffalo Bones [[labelnote:Explanation]]In one scene a skeleton gets ready to attack tiger only to drop back down when tiger looks toward it before trying again. after tiger turns enough times, it just starts dancing. Looking up the scene on youtube, you will find plenty of videos that replace the music with another song.[[/labelnote]]
30	** "The ''Laaaaaaaaazy'' Eye!"
31	* PresumedFlop: The film is a textbook example of this. Partly due to its status compared to the now-classic first movie, partly because it was released on the same day as ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' and vastly overshadowed by it, and partly because, unlike its predecessor, it wasn't directed by Creator/DonBluth, it's widely believed that it was a box-office bomb. It wasn't. It actually made $40 million on a $16 million budget.
32	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: The ''Fievel Goes West'' game for the Platform/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem wasn't too bad of a side-scroller, but it wasn't too impressive either. In the early 2000's Fievel even got a game on the Platform/GameBoyAdvance, ''An American Tail: Fievel's Gold Rush'', which seemed to take place after ''Fievel Goes West'' and played a lot like the Super Nintendo game (odd given that Universal had spent so much effort trying to convince everyone that the movie never happened). This trope is played far more straight with the random ''An American Tail'' game that came out for the Platform/PlayStation2 [[NoExportForYou in Europe]] (which actually plays disturbingly a lot like VideoGame/{{Superman 64}}). The PC game that follows the first two films is another major offender, being targeted towards younger audiences but having insanely hard puzzles that would stump the target audience in addition to featuring 2D sprites being meshed with poorly rendered stills from the movies.
33	* SequelDisplacement: When it first came out and for a few years after, though it's slowly gone away.
34	* {{Squick}}: This line, as the conductor is almost eaten by Cat R. Waul:
35	-->"Next stop: mouth, throat, stomach, intestines and, you guessed it, [[PottyEmergency Green River]]."
36	* TakeThatScrappy: Tanya's first scene in the movie has her begin to sing "Somewhere Out There". People throw produce at her to make her stop.
37	** Despite having been a popular song, you get the feeling the creators of the sequel ''kinda'' hate it, and maybe even hate the first film in general. It's treated as this trope despite neither Tanya nor the song having been hated by most of the audience; only detractors who hated how popular the song got would be amused by the scene. To put it in a modern perspective, picture something like this happening to someone singing "Let It Go" in ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII''.
38	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Whatever your opinion of the film itself, it boasts some absolutely beautiful and fluid animation for a Creator/DonBluth sequel made without Bluth's involvement. One could argue that the animation is ''even better'' than what the original offered (having twice the first film's budget didn't hurt).
39	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Much like how the first movie made allusions to the challenges newly-immigrated Americans faced in a city environment, this one's main plot (in which the cats are utilizing the mice for labor before simply devouring them) could be seen as referencing the plight of the various minority railroad workers (namely the newly-freed slaves and the freshly-immigrated Irish and Chinese), who tended to get chewed up and spit out by the sheer magnitude of the workload they were burdened with.

Context YMMV / AnAmericanTailFievelGoesWest