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Anastasia

Released:  1997

Synopsis:

Anastasia is a Russian princess. She's the grand-daughter of the Romanovs. Rasputin, the bad guy, is a freaky wizard of sorts. He puts a curse on the Romanovs and tries to kill them all. Oddly enough, they seem to escape and go to Paris and the only one he wants dead now is Anastasia who gets accidentally left behind in Russia. For some reason, Rasputin is unaware of this and turns into a zombie in some kind of underground netherworld. 

Ten years pass, and this dwonk (named Dimitri) who helped Anastasia escape the palace finds her and decides to pass her off as the long-lost Princess Anastasia since there is a reward being offered by her grand-mother in Paris. Anastasia, of course, has lost her memory, but she wants to go to Paris because of a necklace she has with that city's name on it. Yeah, lame plot for a lame movie.

The Review:

Now you know the story of this film. Anastasia is very spunky and her character is likable. She doesn't want to deceive anyone, but instead wants to find out who she is and who her family is.

The animation is a mesh of traditional cels and CGI. It is well put-together and nice to look at. The colors are bright and the character design is is pleasing, unlike some of that tripe like Spongbob. 

There's a lot of singing in this show, so it's safe to assume it's a musical. The songs aren't grating, but there's nothing here that's superb either. The main song is reminiscent of something else, but I can't put my finger on it. That particular song is the one that Anastasia and her grandmother sing at the very beginning of the movie. You hear it at least 3 times. Fortunately, it's also the best of the bunch.

The storyline seems to mix lots of fact in the fiction. I know there were Romanovs and a Rasputin, who was some kind of respected adviser. However, they made the latter into some kind of mad-man (which he might have been) with demonic powers (which he definitely wasn't). He "sells" his soul to the devil and can send out little greenish demons to try to kill people. 

Rasputin is one of the most creepy / warped characters I've seen in children's flicks. He gets all his skin and muscle and what-not stripped from his bones in his second scene. Later on, when he's in his netherworld, he falls apart. Eyes pop out, a hand falls off...you get the idea. There is some humor here, but it's more of the dark, nervous type.

Dimitri is an OK character, and (of course) he and Anastasia fall for each other. This is way too predictable. Dimitri has a partner, Vladimir that is quite likable. He's a rather fat guy that just has a good attitude and a neat accent. 

Most of the characters don't make you really feel for them though. This could have been a good show if they'd worked on that some more. Of course, I don't think it helped that we are supposed to cheer for Russians just because they're always cast in a bad light in our country. But it is admirable that Fox tried it. (If you go to IMDB, you'll notice a lot of dumb shmucks that seems to think this was a Disney venture...obviously they're not true Disney fans, or else they be able to tell that the animation style is all wrong.)

While the show gets props for putting CGI in and making it work well with the other types of animation, the people behind this would have been better off had they spent the money on a good script. It is lacking that special something that keeps you interested and adding talking animals (like Bartok the bat) doesn't do anything to help.

The Good Stuff:

The Bad Stuff:

I don't recommend this for children below 10. Some will be fine, especially if they've seen much other television, but it's still not very good to watch people's flesh melt and such. Yuck!

It still has a sweet story, so some girls well most likely enjoy this show. Watch it if you're a hopeless romantic.

OVERALL SCORE: 1/2