ANASTASIA contains something that has been lacking from all of the recent Disney releases... (especially Hercules)... emotion.
All the wacky characters voiced by celebrities and fantastically animated adventure sequences aren't going to hold anyone's interest unless there is an emotional core to hold it all together. Not since Disney's Beauty & the Beast has there been such a compelling animated film with interesting characters and drama that works.
The story of the Romanov family, the rulers of Russia, and their downfall begins the film. Anastasia, one of the daughters, narrowly escapes the mad monk Rasputin (Voiced by Christopher Lloyd) with her Grandmother (voiced by Angela Landsbury). But Anastasia gets lost, and grows up with no memory of her royal origins. The Grandmother lives in Paris, hoping to someday find her beloved Anastasia, the only member of the family to survive the Russian Revolution.
A young woman named Anya (Voiced by Meg Ryan) runs across Dimitri (John Cusack) and Vlad (Kelsey Grammar), who are trying to put together a scheme to create an Anastasia to fool the Grandmother and get the reward money. They pick Anya to pose as their princes, and of course, it is soon revealed that Anya is in fact the lost Anastasia. Dimitri realizes that he can never win her love as he is a commoner, and meanwhile, Rasputin is NOT dead, and plots his revenge against the last Romanov.
The plot is actually quite well structured. There are a lot of complexities that may have to be explained to the kids later, but it moves along fast enough that they'll never have time to be bored. What this really means is that the adults won't be bored by it either. There is a great deal of banter between Anya and Dimitri that is very funny, and their relationship develops quite naturally as the film progresses.
There is, of course, lots of comedy for the kids, including Rasputin's pet bat, Bartok (Hank Azaria), who is easily the funniest thing in the film. However, the comical scenes never distract from the drama, but are worked into the plot almost seamlessly.
The animation is gorgeous - the characters seem to come to life through the talented animators. Not since Beauty & The Beast have animated characters had so much life to them. Even without the voices, they act. The musical number in Paris is a show-stopper, with some of the backgrounds rendered in an impressionist painting style.
As with all recent animated features, there are songs, however, these songs do more than just provide fodder for top-40 singers to get on the radio (although there are three of them during the end credits). The songs are all very catchy, and advance the plot, instead of just being showpieces (except for the Paris number, but that's so much fun, it's okay...).
I can't reccomend ANASTASIA highly enough. It's a wonderful film that ranks right up there with other animated classics. Kids and adults alike will enjoy it, and it's also nice to have a quality animated feature film from another studio besides Disney.
***** (out of 5)
- Chris
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