An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island

An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island, titled in the film as An American Tail III: The Treasure of Manhattan Island was the first direct-to-video and third film in the An American Tail series made in 1998. This film was first released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment in the United Kingdom in November 16, 1998. This was advertised on related titled VHS in mid 1998, but wasn't officially released in the United States until February 15, 2000. Thomas Dekker took over the role of Fievel Mousekewitz from Phillip Glasser, the original actor, who was already 20 years old by then. Four actors from the original film (Dom DeLuise, Erica Yohn, Nehemiah Persoff, and Pat Musick) reprised their roles.

Plot

The story starts off in New York City setting sometime after the first movie, presumably between 1892 and 1896, Fievel and Tony discover that an ancient treasure lies underneath Manhattan when snooping around an abandoned subway (the Beach Pneumatic Transit system) and stumbling upon the remains of a dead mouse clutching a treasure map, deciding they must find it with the help of an archaeologist Tony knows: Dr. Dithering, along with fighting five villains as well.

The movie focuses on the relationship between the over-exploited workers of a sweatshop (in this case, a cheese production line) and the factory's rich owners: Mr. Grasping (Ron Perlman), Toplofty (Tony Jay) and O'Bloat (Richard Karron). It also focuses on the plight of the Native Americans in the United States. The treasure under Manhattan turns out to be a group of Lenape mice living a long distance beneath the surface (far below the sewers, riding in an underground pressurized train) that decided to hide when they saw how the first Europeans only brought war and disease with them and didn't want to wait for the European mice to do the same to them. An emotional scene ensues when Fievel must struggle with how cruel his own people the Europeans were (and still are at the time the film takes place) to the natives of America.

The sachem decides to send his cute and beautiful daughter, Cholena (Elaine Bilstad), to the surface to see if they have "changed their ways." Upon their return, Scuttlebutt (John Kassir) (one of the members of the expedition to find the treasure) reports to the villains unbeknownst to the rest of the members of the expedition, who then decide to use this to their advantage. They tell all the workers of the sweatshop about Cholena (obviously not by name) and that she is their enemy. The mouse NYPD Chief McBrusque (Sherman Howard) and Scuttlebutt engage in a bout of police brutality, burning down "every mouse house and rat hole" until they find her. After the angry mouse mob try to capture Cholena and anyone else involved with her, Fievel and his friends decide to take Cholena back underground, but the police find out and go after them. Meanwhile, everyone finds out about Dr. Dithering's friendship with the Indian and take him to the butcher shop for his punishment. Papa tells everyone about how madness like this is why they all left for America and should work together to become friends with those different from them as the fellow Americans they are.

Tiger saves Dr. Dithering from the villains, who escape and order McBrusque and his men to find and murder the Native Americans. Upon returning Cholena to her home and telling the chief what is happening. McBrusque, Scuttlebutt, and the other police officers show up to the village until the Chief, the Native Americans, Fievel and his friends drive the villains away. The chief gives them a gunpowder bomb to collapse the tunnel connecting the Native Americans to the outside world. But before they can do so, they are ambushed by the enraged McBrusque and Scuttlebutt who attempt to kill the kids once and for all, but the two crooks are overpowered and Fievel manages to set of the bomb. This floods the tunnel, together with McBrusque and Scuttlebutt as they fall into the chasm to their deaths. Tony and Tanya managed to reach higher ground, but Fievel was carried off by the current. When the water recedes Tanya and Tony desperately search through the mud to find him, before giving up. But just then, Fievel breaks through the surface, and they all three share a muddy group hug, thankful that everyone survived.

The movie ends with Fievel's papa forming a worker's union and the villains agreeing amongst themselves to negotiate "with that riff-raff" because otherwise, they'll go on strike and make them go bankrupt while Tiger the cat, who is now the new police chief, watches them. The last scene is Fievel seeing, through a foldable telescope, Cholena and her father disappearing into a hidden door at the foot of a statue, which pleases Fievel. They were never seen nor even spoken of again.

Characters

• Fievel Mousekewitz: The main protagonist, a little mouse with hopes and dreams for the American life.
• Tanya Mousekewitz: Fievel's older sister, but is once again younger and Mama and Papa often hold her against her wishes.
• Papa Mousekewitz: Fievel's father. He was one of the Cheese factory workers until seeing Grasping's true color later in the film.
  • Mama Mousekewitz: Fievel's mother.
  • Yasha Mousekewitz: Fievel and Tanya's baby sister.
• Tiger: The orange cat who is friends with the Russian-Jewish mouse family. He became the Police Chief at the end, but is cut from The Mystery of the Night Monster for political reasons.
• Tony Toponi: Fievel's 16-year-old Sicilian best friend who returns from the series' first film An American Tail. He goes along with Fievel throughout the film and often helps with Dr. Dithering.
• Cholena: One of film's main protagonists and the Lenape princess. She is a parody of Pocahontas and her voice actress, Elaine Bilstad, was a Native American actress, which was her last role appearance before her death with a heart problem on January 29, 1999.
  • Chief Wulisso: The Lenape Chief and Cholena's father.
  • Tankho: Cholena's buxom Lenape handmaiden.
• Dr. Dithering: The archaeologist who helped Fievel and his friends on their exploitation for the treasure.
• Mr. Grasping: The film's main antagonist and the fearsome boss of the Cheese Factory. He enslaves everybody that works in the factory. He is one of the many villains in this film that is racist.
  • Mr. Toplofty: Grasping's wise colleague.
  • Mr. O'Bloat: Grasping's cowardice colleague.
• Police Chief McBrusque: The film's secondary antagonist and the brutish Police Chief. He gets paid for beating out anyone who rebels against Grasping.
• Scuttlebutt: Dithering's British assistant and traitor. The name "Scuttlebutt" is commonly used as a slang term for gossip and rumors.

Voice cast

• Thomas Alexander Dekker as Fievel Mousekewitz
• Lacey Chabert as Tanya Mousekewitz
• Nehemiah Persoff as Papa Mousekewitz
• Erica Yohn as Mama Mousekewitz
• Dom DeLuise as Tiger
• Pat Musick as Tony Toponi
• Elaine Bilstad as Cholena (Leeza Miller as her singing voice)
• David Carradine as Chief Wulisso
• René Auberjonois as Dr. Dithering
• John Kassir as Scuttlebutt
• Sherman Howard as Police Chief McBrusque
• Ron Perlman as Mr. Grasping
• Tony Jay as Toplofty
• Richard Karron as O'Bloat
• Marianne Muellerleile as Lucretia-Noble Rat
• Dave Mallow as Looper (additional voices)

Trivia

• This is the first and only movie to feature mice as villains. The previous movies had depicted cats as the villains, and the main villain of the fourth film was a dog.
• Scuttlebutt and Chief McBrusque are the only villains to be killed off from the American Tail franchise.
• This is the first and only film in the franchise Fievel has a love interest.
• This film contains more mature themes than the other entries in the series, as movies with politically sensitive elements would have earned a PG or PG-13 rating today according to IMDb.
  • The movie was withheld for over a year due to its difficulty.
• There is a hidden undertone in Tankho's character, involving her interaction with Scuttlebutt. This concept typecasts stereotyped sexuality of Native American women, which was often used on older animated projects, such as Looney Tunes and most infamously, Peter Pan from 1953. It has since been abandoned in later decades, such as the 21st century, due to racial controversy got out of hand in United States.
• Neither of the characters mention about the concept that happened during this movie in the finale, assuming due to the creators decided to depart the third film's concepts from the fourth movie to avoid further controversy within the franchise by giving the fourth movie much safer plotline.
• The film slightly differs from it's February 2000 VHS release and 2004 DVD release. For the VHS, the cover has the movie's title on a buckskin, where on the DVD the movie's title is on a plated gold background. In the film itself, the beginning of the VHS it is titled An American Tail III: The Treasure of Manhattan Island, where on the DVD, the title at the beginning is simply An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island removing the Roman Numerals.
• The original trailer has details limited, which omits the politically sensitive elements, as well as mostly ignoring some of the original characters’ controversial changes. It only focused on Fievel’s relationship with Cholena and the bravery of the main protagonists. The trailer is only sourced on the Universal’s titled VHS tapes prior to the film’s release as in the digital stores, the preview only shows Tony taking Fievel and Tiger to the abandoned subway, completely ignoring everything else. Universal has since abandoned the original trailer years after the release.
  • Despite this, it can be found on video sharing websites, such as YouTube.
• Notably possible censorship were made on the home media covers, to make it less offensive to the buyers. For instance, Cholena's fur is given a rather cream color to oppose the original reddish color which reflects the skin color of an actual Native American maiden. Every villain in this movie, along with Tankho and Dr. Dithering, are not shown on the cover. Chief Wulisso and some of the Lenape mice appeared on the back of the VHS cover, but are dropped from the cover of the DVD releases.

Geography error

• Tony Toponi mentioned that the Beach Pneumatic subway shut down 12 years earlier from the timeline this movie took place, which the subway closed in 1873. In An American Tail, the timeline at the beginning was December 1885 and assumed early 1886 after the Mousekewitz moved to United States as the Statue of Liberty was still under construction. The timeline at the end was middle of 1886 as the statue was completed, which means the subway's closure was 13 years after the timeline this movie took place (assuming in late Summer 1886).
• The Statue of Liberty is seen to have its modern green patina in this film. However, this film is set in the 1880s like the first American Tail film, so the copper statue should still have its original brown color as seen in the first film when it was newly built. The statue didn't get its modern green color until the 1920s. This strangely carries on in the next film.

The retconning of Fievel Goes West

When late director Larry Latham began working on the infamous third installment, he believed it was a decision to have the second installment dismissed with a "dream" reference by upper management. He even wrote this on the movie's talk page on Wikipedia in December 1, 2009 (11 years after the making):

I (Larry Latham) directed and produced the two DVD sequels, and it was a decision of upper management to dismiss Feivel Goes West with the dream reference. The picture had not done as well as expected, and it was felt that it took the series in the wrong direction. There were hopes that these sequels would do well enough to continue on for some time, ala The Land Before Time sequels. Didn't happen, so people are free to construct any mythology they want about the actual order of the films.

Retconning the event from Fievel Goes West in the third movie became one of the most difficult experience in An American Tail history, as no further information about the movie was given out by the film makers ever since. However, things changed for the crew when started working on The Mystery of the Night Monster, as characters and elements from this installment are politically forbidden from the forthcoming finale.

Reception

The film was poorly received by audiences and currently has a 28% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. A common criticism of the film relates to its direct-to-video animation quality. The film has proven to be divisive within the fandom. Many fans appreciate that most of the voice cast from the first film returned and that it was closer in tone to the original, and some praise it for including more mature themes than many DTV films of the time. However, Fievel Goes West was the better-received film with most audiences, and this movie's attempt to retcon that film into a dream angered some fans. Also, some fans take issue with changes made for the franchise’s characters, deliberately ignoring the continuities from the past films. Some of the new characters, such as Cholena, was considered one of the highlights of the film and Elaine Bilstad was praised for her voice performance. The villains of the film received mixed reviews. They were considered racist and too mature for a kid's film, however, the voice actors were praised for their performances (most especially Tony Jay and Ron Perlman).

It one of the less well-received Don Bluth sequels, but was not as poorly received as The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue. Even Common Sense Media gained negative attention with politically sensitive elements in the film.[1]

Songs

• "We Live in Manhattan"
• "Friends of the Working Mouse"
• "Anywhere in Your Dreams"

Political themes

The subplots in this film are subjects of racism, police corruption, attempting genocide, and worker's rights. This even includes Native American stereotypes involving the Lenape mice, with their furs reflecting the skin color of actual Native Americans, which are deemed insensitive in today's society.[2][3] These concepts are mainly condemned from children's media today.