An American Tail/Tear Jerker

• Even just the background orchestration by itself is a tear jerker, let alone several scenes throughout the film.
  • "Give me your tired, your poor..."
  • The Great Fire
• The Orphan Alley scene. It's just hard to watch.

Fievel: This is my home now...

And the camera panning out, showing us the hundreds of other orphans sleeping, also having lost hope...

• Fievel hearing his father's voice and muttering a barely audible "Papa...?" near the end of the movie is the simplest, yet strongest tearjerker ever.
• The Irish lad in the song "There Are No Cats in America", singing about how his true love was killed.

Irish Lad: In a flash of teeth and fur/Her tail was all he left of her...

• The song Somewhere Out There is really one big tear jerker as well.
• When Fievel is finally reunited with his family (a happy tearjerker, but one nonetheless). Especially since Fievel was shown as having given up all hope in the previous scene. Now try watching "Somewhere Out There" again, only this time think about how it sounds to someone who's spouse is overseas because he/she is in the military.
• "Five. I mean...four."
• The scene where Fievel first thinks he hears his father's violin playing...it turns out to be a record player. It's his reaction that does it.
• In Fievel Goes West, when the cats attacked the Mousewitzs and the Toponis does it when you realize that these families had accomplished so much in the 1st movie, but they're still being attacked by cats. What made it worse was that Tony and Bridget now have a baby that was being attacked.

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