Anastasia (1997)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Best movie of this year hands down!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The storytelling in this film is awful. It lasts too long to engage with something interesting for much time, and the storyline is actually hollow. The film mostly feels tedious and boring. It lacks focus. The character design is charmless aside from Rasputin and the animation has many flaws (especially with the armies). The jokes are mostly unsuccessful, because they do not coincide with the atmosphere and look completely out of place. Almost all the characters are dull and uninteresting, with the exception of Anastasia, Rasputin and maybe the fat guy who helped Alexander and Anastasia in the ending. Anastasia's family and Alexander are too bland and underdeveloped to be sympathetic -that is worse in the case of Anastasia's family because they are going to die. The birds are not those awful instruments of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", but can come as annoying in many parts.This film lacked caution in the topic of shooting the Romanov family, and forgets that they are dead. The ending has a happy feel, because Anastasia recovers her memory, but that means that she will never see her family again. Are we supposed to be happy for that? And after Anastasia's memory is recovered, suddenly, this film has ended abruptly and confusingly. Hooray! The music is gorgeous, the voice acting is good and the romance between Anastasia and Alexander feels natural, but those details do not redeem this lackluster film.

I do enjoy the Golden Films Animations, they are cute, charming and entertaining with great music and sweet characters. Before I do get judged for rating this one low, I was hoping I would like it. I loved Golden Films' versions of Thumbelina, Pinocchio and The Little Mermaid especially, and while I was not expecting another Don Bluth Anastasia I was really disappointed with this one. It is not completely bad though. Anastasia is a sweet and likable titular character, and the voice acting is also not bad with the best coming from the voice actors of Anastasia and Rasputin. But the best asset was the music, which was outstanding. Not just the songs, with Anastasia and Alexander's duet the best, but Never Ending Circle is charming and Rasputin's song is enough to make your hairs stick up, but also the classical music choices from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Nutcracker, Mussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain, Dvorak's Slavonic Dances to Rimsky Korsakov's Sheherazade and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries(plus a piece that sounded like one of Brahms' Hungarian Dances. However, the animation seemed rushed and lacking in fluidity, with some of the colours rather flat-looking and of the character designs Anastasia was the only one who convinced. Alexander certainly is handsome, but looks like a less well-animated version of Prince Eric. The characters I was mixed on, again Anastasia was the best and Rasputin showed menace and potential(I found him in his scenes to be more believable than the Rasputin in Bluth's version) but in the last quarter he disappears and is never mentioned again. The Royal Family seemed underdeveloped with Anastasia's mother(Alexandra was it not?) having very little to do, and Alexander was dashing but somewhat bland. The script was uneven for me, the scene where Anastasia and Alexander first meet seemed on the forced side and could've lasted a little longer and the more comedic moments with the bird friends(a sign of political correctness if you ask me) seemed out of place at times. But the story was the biggest debit(if I was to ignore the many inaccuracies for a second) rather thin and takes quite some time to get going. The scenes leading up to the terrible event seemed to lack tension, and even as a child I was underwhelmed by the ending, very abrupt and brought about many questions, especially the business regarding Rasputin and the "greatest adventure" part of the synopsis was misleading(I can't tell you why without giving it away). So all in all, loved the music and Anastasia herself, but I was disappointed by the story and the animation especially. 4/10 Bethany Cox