10 Bleak Movies With Unexpectedly Happy Endings
7. An American Tail
We can see you rolling your eyes, don't think we can't! And for those of you who are, thank you for pointing out the fact that you clearly have not seen this emotional boot camp of a movie. An American Tail spends all but the last 10% of the movie doing everything within its power to make you as depressed as humanely possible.
To begin with, our main character, a little mouse named Fievel, gets separated from his parents during a boat ride to America, looking for a new life. They don't even reach the shore before this separation, and now this little kid is lost in a strange land without his parents. For a kid, this is scary/depressing enough. But add onto that the fact that this is Don Bluth, a filmmaker famous for the mindset that - so long as there's a happy ending - you can kick childrens' collective asses as much as you please.
From constantly missing his parents, to his life being constantly put in peril, to every supposed ally being hilariously useless, until those last few minutes, nothing goes right for Fievel at all.