Topic: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

Previously established: I am a teen-aged girl, who conveniently fathered two daughters. Last night we had some time to kill, since school is out today and tomorrow for something or other, so we surfed around on the Netflix and settled on...

Anastasia (1997)
Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammar (Russian accent mode) and Christopher Lloyd as the evil sorcerer Rasputin. Supported by Angela Lansbury and Bernadette Peters. Hank Azaria brings the comic relief familiar to life.

I could stop here and demand that you all watch it now, 'cuz, Dayum! Dat cast.  Having missed or glossed over the credits, I had a good time in my way by guessing the actors from their voices.

It's a modern musical (I could also stop here...), based on a play and follow-on film from the mid-50's.
Neither Ryan nor Cusack sings, their lyrics are handled by stalwarts.

Technically interesting is the use of infant CGI to bring sweeping camera moves and architecture to life in this mostly hand-animated little film.

The historical setup is dubious at best, but then this is a what-if tale about the Tsar's daughter avoiding the bloody parts of the Russian Revolution, immortalized in the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," and elsewhere. We get past that pretty quickly and then it's a road adventure as our heroes meet and subsequently undertake a journey from St. Petersburg to Paris.

The girl has suffered from amnesia since age 8. The men have auditioned countless actresses to play the part of the long lost Duchess Anastasia in a simple scam to win the 10 million Ruble prize for finding her. This contrived mistaken identity is a bit of a hole in the plot, but it is discussed at length and thus festooned with lanterns.

As she is the last of the Romanovs he cursed, the undead Rasputin's soul cannot rest until Anastasia is no more. So like a wicked Oz witch he employs vaporous minions to cause various calamities for the resourceful crew to narrowly escape.

Once in Paris, her grandmother is simply fed up and finished with interviewing pretenders and charlatans, and must be manipulated to even grant an audience to the progressively lovelier Ana.

The film's climax brought tears and cheers from our audience, and I'd say the IMDB 7.1 rating is unfairly low. I skipped it in the 90's, but I'm glad I finally came around.

8.5/10

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

For some reason probably involving a niece, I saw this in the theater and was suitably impressed. It felt more grown up than Disney movies but also less fairy-tale-like. Most of the characters are humans, for example, which always bugs me. (Why not make it live action then?) But it had strong villains, which helped a lot. Cusack is probably miscast, IMO. He has a bland voice and wouldn't have been known by the children in the audience. The character should have been written more as a Bob Hope-type fast-talking, wise-cracking huckster, but IIRC he's kind of wide-eyed and gee-whiz from the start.

EDIT:
In his early films, Bob Hope played genuinely funny cowardly wiseacres. Don't watch the Road to... movies with Bing Crosby, tho.

Last edited by Zarban (2015-11-12 16:18:45)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

It was a bit odd that this was not simply live-action, I would only note that the scenes set in Limbo would have been a VFX challenge back then. Not to mention the scenes of the villain's mayhem and destruction.

I'll agree that Cusack doesn't pass the, "What does Brad Pitt sound like?" test, but neither does Meg Ryan. As it relates to the animated vs. live topic, perhaps the realistic human characters just needed realistic human voices? If it had been live, I'd call it perfect casting to their types. Also, these names are big enough to signal adult ticket buyers that this was not some shabby production.

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

You animate it because you're an animator. This is a Don Bluth film, and he was hired by Fox to animate something they had the rights to. A live action version already existed. Animation does have the advantage (or did, pre CG) of costing the same whether the characters are walking down a hallway or down the streets of some exotic, no longer existing cityscape.

Now, a film you can ask "why?" about is the animated King and I.

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

For the record, this film was on the "I'll allow it" side of the "Why animate humans?" question for me, unlike Polar Express. The villains and Kelsey Grammer's character put it there.

Disney has always been smart about that. From Snow White and Cinderella to today, they pepper the cast with non-humans or weirdo humans. Eventually, they went full cartoon, so even their humans don't seem human.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_SOL5wG7t1g/maxresdefault.jpg

https://vaughncottage.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/pocahontas-john-smith.jpg

http://sites.psu.edu/kandersonholmes/wp-content/uploads/sites/17457/2014/11/princess-and-the-frog-naveen.jpg

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/polls/797000/797596_1312703015858_full.jpg

I bet the Rapunzel and Frozen characters aren't much more than (a childlike) 6 heads high while the Cinderella characters are close to eight heads tall (they were rotoscoped from real actors).

http://jonteaches.com/assets/images/101/scale-and-proportion/human-proportion.jpg

EDIT: Yep.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8a/2f/4a/8a2f4afd32a2fda646951ef2fd7f5cde.jpg

Last edited by Zarban (2015-11-13 02:48:40)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

Anastasia (1997) is clearly in the Pocahontas (1995) realm. But, man, the art direction is radically un-Disney. It's just sumptuous.

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/polls/1363000/1363009_1397322096356_full.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hWvHm1PMsSM/maxresdefault.jpg
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/20100000/Anastasia-Dimitri-in-Anastasia-movie-couples-20168013-1280-720.jpg
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/polls/1206000/1206841_1366335850708_full.jpg
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/p__/images/d/d2/Anastasia_and_Dimitri%27s_kiss.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140813191937&path-prefix=protagonist

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

He was working with a studio with no animation experience which wanted to get some of that Disney business, so threw money at him. For contrast, listen to the commentary on the film Titan A.E.. Bluth is rather open on the why's of that film's problems.

Favorite exchange:
"This makes no sense! Why didn't we do a scene to correct this?"
"We ran out of money."
"Ah. Right."

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: "Anastasia" review by drew & co.

Favorite exchange:
"This makes no sense! Why didn't we do a scene to correct this?"
"We ran out of money."
"Ah. Right."

That's fantastic.

Anastasia is a mixed back for me. The animation is fun and lively and I think "Once upon a December" is probably one of my favorite numbers, period. That said, I can't get in to the story quite as well as some others, despite it being a rather interesting idea. The idea of trying to con someone in to thinking there was a survivor and the shenanigans involved. Rasputin is well done, and the rest of the cast is good, but I agree on the points that Cusack is not very memorable.

Enjoyable for the music, and the animation but not my favorite.

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down