{"id":53,"date":"2012-02-06T00:29:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T06:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animationrevelation.com\/readables\/?p=53"},"modified":"2026-07-17T11:06:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:06:47","slug":"yeehaw-rewind-review-1-fievel-goes-west-daemoncorps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animationrevelation.com\/readables\/?p=53","title":{"rendered":"Yeehaw! Rewind Review 1: Fievel Goes West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cClassic Review?\u201d \u201cRewind Review?\u201d Well, whatever title we decide on, just know that every now and then, we\u2019ll be dusting off the ol\u2019 delorean to go back in time and review some of the animated works from back in the day that stood out to us. So without further ado\u2026<\/p>\n

Instead of having bedtime stories told to me when I was younger, I was raised watching videos before going to bed. My video collection, while not as gigantic as my current DVD collection, was large enough to make up for at least a month\u2019s worth of one hour viewing before bedtime. Looking back, the tapes were your basic lineup of what you would expect from your normal prepubescent kid, mainly being composed of Disney movies from as old school as the original \u201cFantasia\u201d to the first \u201cToy Story.\u201d Out of all those movies, though, only one of them stands out to me today:<\/p>\n

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\nYep, that\u2019s right. \u201cFievel Goes West.\u201d I remember nights just staring at the TV thinking how awesome it would be to be Fievel with his pop pistols and his reversible hat and having to escape from clothed felines and a creepy as all heck spider with a gold tooth and cigar. The reversible hat, especially. Seriously, how awesome would it be to be able to switch from a normal hat to a cowboy hat just like that?<\/p>\n

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\nTo this day, I\u2019ve yet to see the first \u201cAmerican Tail\u201d movie or any of the straight to home video releases following the sequel and I don\u2019t really feel the need to. Unlike other movies and their sequels, I never saw \u201cFievel Goes West\u201d as part of a series of movies and always thought it stood well as a stand-alone.<\/p>\n

Having been made during the \u201cTiny Toons\u201d era of his career, it makes complete sense for producer Steven Spielberg to have made this sequel when he did. \u201cFievel Goes West\u201d was incredibly similar to \u201cTiny Toons\u201d in that while the overall plot may not be something to write home about, every musical piece in the movie was memorable.<\/p>\n

The plot\u2019s basic enough\u2026 er, at least as basic as a children\u2019s movie made in the early nineties could be. Fievel Mousekewitz and the rest of his family are immigrant mice who have moved to New York in an attempt to escape the persecution of their \u201cpeople\u201d from the cats in the area. Realizing that life in the states is just as difficult as life back home, the family decides to move with the rest of the mice to the West where stories tell of mice and cats living together in peace. Or at least that\u2019s the story given by the red top-hatted and monocled Cat R. Waul. Being separated from his parents and the rest of the mice on the trek West and finding out Waul\u2019s evil plan of initially befriending the mice only to eat them later, Fievel must go West by himself and warn his fellow mice before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Wow, typing that up really put in perspective what I was talking about.<\/p>\n

Okay, so the plot may not be Emmy winning gold, but that was never what defined the movie for me. What I really enjoyed about the movie, both then and now, was the music. In a time when Disney movies were absolutely pwning their competition, Fievel\u2019s music is able to hold its own. Okay, sure, it was completely destroyed by \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d which was released in theaters the same day, in the box office, but that doesn\u2019t mean its music doesn\u2019t hold up just as well. Really.<\/p>\n

Having recently watched the movie again after so many years was like listening to a song you haven\u2019t heard in a while. Or I guess in this case, a couple songs you haven\u2019t heard in a while. From \u201cDreams to Dream\u201d to \u201cThe Girl You Left Behind\u201d to everything in between, Fievel really delivers when it comes to being a musical. I mean, just listen to this:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/center>That is pure nineties music awesome, right there. And when you get down to the roots of it, that\u2019s really how I\u2019d describe the movie as a whole.<\/p>\n

So while it may not have the most ingenious of plots, \u201cAn American Tale: Fievel Goes West\u201d really stands out in being one of the few animated movies at the time to even dare stand up to the Leviathan that was Disney movies during their golden age and succeed\u2026 even if it took a couple years to do so to build up the nostalgia factor.<\/p>\n

~~~<\/p>\n

\u2026 And on a completely random side note, what\u2019s the deal with the movie\u2019s aspect ratio? Checking both amazon and amazon.ca, the only version of the movie I\u2019ve been able to find on DVD is only out in fullscreen. But based on the above video as well as some screencaps on the movie\u2019s Wiki page, it looks like the movie was done in widescreen. Just to make sure, I double checked the Wiki screencaps with some I took from my copy of the movie:<\/p>\n

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\nSo what\u2019s the difference and why should you care? Well in short, the film was originally animated to fit the widescreen format and in some cases makes full use of that space. Having the image cut to fullscreen size means cutting off bits of the sides and maybe even contorting the image itself a bit, like what I figured had to be done with the first comparison image above. In short, watching fullscreen footage from something that was originally made in widescreen means messing with the original footage to some degree.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rant on, but I\u2019m straying further from the point. Just check out Wiki\u2019s page on aspect ratio<\/a> if you understood and are interested in anything I brought up just now. And (in an attempt to bring everything together) make an attempt to pick up \u201cFievel Goes West\u201d in its widescreen version if you can, though that may be easier said than done considering I\u2019ve yet to even find a listing for it in that format.<\/p>\n

Weird.<\/p>\n

Originally posted on Thursday, March 26, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cClassic Review?\u201d \u201cRewind Review?\u201d Well, whatever title we decide on, just know that every now and then, we\u2019ll be dusting off the ol\u2019 delorean to go back in time and review some of the animated works from back in the day that stood out to us. So without further ado\u2026 Instead of having bedtime stories told to me when I was younger, I was raised watching videos before going to bed. My video collection, while not as gigantic as my…<\/p>\n

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