[3] The film stars the voices of Phillip Glasser, John Finnegan, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff, Dom DeLuise, and Christopher Plummer.

While celebrating Hanukkah, Papa gives his hat to his seven-year-old son, Fievel, and tells him about the United States, a country in which he believes there are no cats.

However, Fievel floats to New York in a bottle and, after a pep talk from a French pigeon named Henri, decides to look for his family.

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.

They capture and imprison Fievel, but his guard is a reluctant member of the gang, a vegetarian tabby cat called Tiger, who becomes friends and frees him.

However, a pile of leaking kerosene cans has caused a torch lying on the ground to ignite the pier, and the mice are forced to flee when the fire department arrives to extinguish it.

Henri ends the journey by taking everyone to see his newly completed project—the Statue of Liberty, which appears to smile and wink at Fievel and Tanya, and the Mouskewitzes' new life in the United States begins.

In a 1985 interview, he described his role in the production as "first in the area of story, inventing incidents for the script, and now consists of looking, every three weeks to a month, at the storyboards that Bluth sends me and making my comments".

Nevertheless, this was Spielberg's first animated feature, and it took some time for him to learn that adding a two-minute scene would take dozens of people months of work.

Emmy Award-winning writers Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss (known for their work on Sesame Street) were brought in to expand the script.

[8] Spielberg also had some material cut that he felt was too intense for children, including a scene Bluth was developing revolving around wave monsters while the family was at sea.

[8] This was during a period when the market for nostalgia was particularly strong among baby boomers,[12] who at this time were seeking products for their young children, and only three years before the beginning of the Disney Renaissance for the studio Bluth once worked for.

Discussion arose about moving the entire production to Ireland, but Spielberg balked at the idea of a story called An American Tail being produced overseas.

They also utilized the process of building models and photographing them, particularly the ship at sea, and the "Giant Mouse of Minsk",[11] a technique also used in many Disney films.

During production, Amblin and Universal expected to view the dailies and approve all major work on the film, and various outside parties also requested changes here and there.

As the release deadline approached, pressure grew among the crew and numerous problems arose, ranging from slower-than-expected cel painting in Ireland to low footage output by some animators.

After he completed Aliens, James Horner composed the score for the film, which was recorded in England and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of King's College.

Two excerpts of period music also appear in the film: The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa and Poor Wand'ring One from the 1880 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan.

There is also a musical reference to the 1947 song Galway Bay popularized by Bing Crosby, and "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" is a choral interpretation of a portion of Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus".

Bahler left the project, in which Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann were later brought on to compose new songs, collaborating with Horner.

Original songs & scores performed in the film include: All songs are composed by James Horner and Barry Mann with lyrics written by Cynthia Weil; all scores are composed by Horner The film has grossed up to $47 million in the United States and Canada, and $84 million worldwide.

It would later be outgrossed by Bluth's next film, 1988's The Land Before Time, which marginally outperformed Oliver & Company although the latter did beat out former at the domestic box office by $5,000,000.

[30] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "witless if well-meaning", adding that its high points were scenes involving the characters Gussie Mausheimer and Tiger.

[3] In his review for the Chicago Reader, Pat Graham panned its "flimsy characterizations" but said that "the overall quality of the animation—baroquely executed if rather conventionally conceived—makes it worth a look".

[31] Common Sense Media gave it largely positive reviews, commenting that "this is a heartwarming animated tale about the experience of immigrants coming to America.

[32] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it "a bright-eyed tale of Jewish triumphs that will find a place in many young hearts", adding that "it reiterates the happiness of homogeneity, prepares the pups for both brotherhood and the free enterprise system.

[45] On August 11, 1998, both the film and its sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West were digitally restored and re-released onto VHS in a 2-pack box set with both videos having clamshell cases.

[52] A 13-episode TV series based on it called Fievel's American Tails aired on the CBS network between September and December 1992.

[53] Two direct-to-video films were also later produced by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment: The Treasure of Manhattan Island in 1998,[54] and The Mystery of the Night Monster in 1999.

[58] Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis has adapted the film into a stage musical, which made its world premiere on April 25, 2023.