An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster (1999)

Egad.

I guess even the previous one still made enough money to warrant this fourth sequel, although right off the bat, one could argue it was not needed, nor wanted. But we still got it anyway, so...

The borough where the mice live, has been sealed off from the rest of Manhattan by a wall, because there is a monster that kidnaps mice in the night. So the wall seems like the only thing that works to keep it at bay. Tanya, Fievel's sister, is now working for a newspaper and Fievel is sent with her. It has something to do with conquering his fear of the monster.

Well, yes, everything is vague in this film.

Also, there is a miniature poodle that shows up and pretends to be a soothsayer. Three guesses who the villain of this one is.

That is the film in a nutshell.

The animation is still of a lower quality thanks to the smaller budget that straight-to-video releases have to deal with. It is on par with the Manhattan one, so there's not a real big drop in quality again, fortunately. But it still looks fugly and rushed at times. This film is even ten minutes shorter now and it feels even longer. Boy, how this one drags itself to the finish. There is not a single engaging moment. Lots of songs, though, always a bad sign that the storyline itself wasn't enough to pad the runtime.

The idea that a poodle constructs a machine, operated by cats in order to kidnap (mousenap?) mice so they can sell them as food to other cats is far-fetched, to say the least. Gone is every semblance of something like commentary on the situation of immigrants that even came through a little in the last outing, now it's just a straight up 'adventure mystery', except everyone bar the smallest of children will instantly unravel this mystery.

I also would like to point out how ugly the cats in the sewer are drawn. No really, they look like they're on that uncomfortable verge between complete caricatures and the style from the other films, only they got hit with the ugly stick. Yikes.

But by far my biggest gripe is that this one is sooo incredibly dull, boring and uninteresting, even little kids will have trouble staying focused for the short runtime.

Avoid at all costs.