Anastasia

I loved this movie as a kid, so I thought I would re-watch it. Thankfully that wasn't a mistake. Though the movie is not as good as I remember it is still pretty good. The plot is kind of dumb, and some of the songs miss, but it is visually stunning. All the characters motion looks great and the landscapes are fantastic. Most of the songs are quite good, and the voice actors do a fine job (despite being screen actors by trade).
This movie holds up, at least for me. It might be nostalgia (probably is).

I love this movie! Calling this a cartoon makes me feel ashamed, so I ended up adding it to two lists. Everything about it was **perfect**. The music, the **animation**, the _animated_ emotions, the fluid movements, the setting and storyline, and EVERYTHING in between! I loved Anya and Dimitri's duo dynamic, both before and after; not to mention Vlad and Pooka's chemistry was the best cute relief!

The score-reducers were the smaller details, like how [spoiler]Dimitry accepted his love for Anya only after her "transformation" into a princess[/spoiler] and subsequently, [spoiler]how his behaviour towards her also made a 180-degree spin[/spoiler]. But given the time during which this movie is set and given all other specifics, I can understand how [spoiler]his behaviour[/spoiler] was not really offensive, but rather quite understandable. So that brings me back to where I started: this movie is perfection!

>Must watch for all age groups!

Re-watched this for the first time as an adult last weekend, I wasn't disappointed. I used to be obsessed with this film when it came out, I had the doll, sang the songs, and I can still see why.. it was truly enchanting, the Rasputin scenes were suitable creepy, and I felt the emotion at the ending (don't want to spoil it!)

Loved this film as a kid. Still love it as an adult. My politics and some annoyances with the historical artistic license are pretty much the only things that take me out of it, and really the political issues are only in the first 10 minutes. Great music, great animation, decent voice acting even though its celebs instead of pros (especially Kelsey Grammer and Christopher Lloyd), and an enjoyable if somewhat cliche'd plot. "In the Dark of the Night" will always be one of my favorite villain songs.

[7.8/10] *Anastasia* is the lost Disney Renaissance film. I’ve seen fans describe it as legendary director/animator Don Bluth trying to “out-disney Disney”, and he and his collaborators do! You have the splendid imagery, the chipper and heartfelt song, the playful romance, the royal twist, the conniving villain, the cute and quippy animal sidekicks, the temporary romantic misunderstanding of intentions, a mysterious origin that culminates in connection and warmth. The ingredients that marked the Mouse’s most creatively fecund period are all present here.

Hell, you can get more specific than that. The romance, between Anya the amnesiac lost Romanov daughter and Dmitri the royal steward-turned-con artist can be summed up as “What if Ariel fell in love with Aladdin?” The title character is practically the spitting image of the little mermaid, down to her dresses, and Dmitri’s grifter with a heart of gold routine recounts both the famous street rat and his own romance with a princess-as-commoner.

The film’s villain, Rasputin, is cut from the same cloth as Jafar, and his sidekick, Bartok, is a playful spin on Iago. Hell, between Mrs. Potts herself, the inimitable Angela Lansbury, and the parental Vlad crooning an equivalent to “Tale as Old as Time” while the young lovebirds dance, you even have a healthy dose of *Beauty and the Beast* in there.

But you know what? I like those films. I like those archetypes. I like those elements. And while it’s easy to poke fun at it in hindsight, I like the Disney Renaissance formula. And you know what? *Anastasia* does it very well! With Fox animation studios now owned by the Mouse, you could incorporate Anya into the princess line-up, play this film back to back with the studio’s 1990s high water mark pictures, or do a *Kingdom Hearts* level set in this version 1920s France, and nothing from the film would feel out of place next to Disney’s best.

The songs are gorgeous and memorable, from the rousing chorus number of “A Rumor in St. Petersberg”, to the haunting tones of “Once Upon a December”, to the cheering fun of “Learn to Do It”, to a foot-tapping musical tour of Paris, the songwriting duo of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty play the melodies to the hilt, injecting a classic musical flair that brings the film to life.

But nothing has more life in it than the film’s sumptuous animation. Bluth and co-director Gary Goldman outdo themselves. No frame here feels out of place, no image feels shortcut, no movement feels like it had less than their complete attention. The throngs and back alleys of St. Petersberg, the grimey recesses of Limbo, the snow-covered trails to the big city, the bucolic grace of the Strasburg countryside, the impressionist splendor of Paris, are all rendered with inviting virtuosity. Each setting feels more intricate and full of details big and small than the last.

The same goes for the cinematography. The film is rife with striking shots, like Anastasia seeming tiny and alone in the stretch of a small castle, to the cramped intimacy of her traveling quarter crammed into a train car or ship’s cabin. Bluth and Goldman make tremendous use of color in light, with luminescent hues that emerge from the villain’s dark powers and Anastasia’s literal glow, to simple cinematic eye lighting that highlights the characters’ expressions in intimate moments. There is such a bravura job done with the craft of imagery and animation on display that *Anastasia* could thrive on its visuals alone.

Admittedly, not all of them are perfect. Anya and Dmitri in particular have a rotoscoped look to their expressions and movements that sees them veer dangerously close to the uncanny valley. Likewise, the Dowager Empress has a few awkward looks or gestures that sit too close to realism for comfort. And while the computer-animated elements are better-integrated here than in many of *Anastasia*’s contemporaries (I’m looking at you *Treasure Planet*), they’re still conspicuous and clunky in how they’re composited in some places (I’m looking at you, winged horse).

Despite that, when Bluth, Goldman, and their team don’t try so hard for verisimilitude, and lean more into impressionism, the results are stunning. The spindly, literally falling apart Rasputin is a pip, with gross gags and distinctive movements. Bartok the bat and Pooka the pup bring the requisite cuteness in their grins and tumbles. The bulbous Vlad and his paramour Sophie swing and swoon with the best of them. And the dancing, in turn elegant and regimented, or freewheeling and fluid, cements the film’s musical bona fides.

The film’s only real weakness is its story. Even as *Anastasia* pulls from the Disney blueprint elsewhere, the narrative is the only place it scans as played out and generic. The princess who doesn’t know she’s a princess, the young person yearning for family, the slighted bad guy after power and revenge, the journey to the big city to find your destiny, the sniping lovebirds who eventually realize they care deeply for one another, are all stock elements delivered well enough, but without anything to recommend them.

Despite pretensions to grand themes of belonging and twue wuv, *Anastasia* never quite achieve the grand sense of emotion and catharsis it’s going for. The closest it comes is when Anya is reunited with her grandmother, and what each thought could never be restored is finally back for both of them. But Rasputin’s motives are thin, the romance is off-the-shelf, and Anya’s “what you’ve thought you wanted is not, it turns out, what you truly desire” routine is bog standard.

And yet, it’s elevated by the performances. As much as Anya and Dmitri’s romantic tet-a-tet is the millionth derivation of *Much Ado About Nothing*, Meg Ryan and John Cusack have superb sparring energy, which bolsters the proceedings considerably. Kelsey Grammer is at his boisterous best as Vlad, Christopher Lloyd goes for broke exquisitely as Rasputin, and Hank Azaria nearly steals the show as the chatty batty Bartok. Of course, theater royalty Angela Lansbury lends an air of dignity, and a sense of earned sentiment, to the Doward Empress and her search for, and reunion with, her long lost granddaughter. Fill your movie with enough stellar performers, and you can muddle your way through stock characters and standard story beats to still achieve great success.

My only reservations on that front are the historical hash at play. In truth, I don’t mind that *Anastasia*, at a minimum, wildly warps the history it’s invoking here. Sure, the real Anastasia died with the rest of her family, and the real Rasputin wasn’t a cartoon villain, and there’s plenty of anachronisms big and small one could point to. But taken as an alternate history fairytale, which is the mode the movie plays in, that’s all easily forgiven.

What’s a little less seemly is the whole “Woe be to those poor deposed royals, who were only overthrown because power from the literal devil turned their hearts mad.” You can harbor no love for the regime that followed the Romanovs and still not love the framing of “Won’t somebody please think of the monarchy?” and the (at best) gross oversimplification, and arguable perversion, of the cultural and political movements that saw them overthrown. Perhaps the quartet of writers would have done better to follow in the footsteps of *Aladdin* and done a “Russia with the serial numbers filed off” pastiche instead of invoking and botching actual history.

Still, if you can set that aside (and it’s a pretty minor part of the film), *Anastasia* is a feast for the eyes and for the ears. It’s full of memorable characters, toe-tapping songs, and gorgeous images as far as the eye can see. And what it lacks in historical accuracy, it makes up for in jaw-dropping artistry.

What made that Disney Renaissance period so great was the combination of all those things, blended together into a collection of stories and images and iconic figures that burrowed their way into the hearts and minds of children everywhere. With their shot at the same lofty target, Bluth and Goldman prove that they can do it as well (or better) as any, and that no one, not even the Mouse, has a monopoly on that magic.

Dimitri is THE MAN 😩😩 Also, Bartok asking Rasputin to check his blood pressure and find a good life is just funny and endearing

Sweet movie, even with a basic story it was easy to grow attached to the characters because of the nicely written dialogue and the expressive animation, and the songs were great! It really did well as a musical. The villain was very fun too with how his body parts kept coming apart, I can see the animators had a ton of fun with this one. Visually it was also interesting, because this movie both has the extremely fluid animation you know from early Disney but you can see too that this movie was drawn digitally and there are attempts at utilizing cg and digital photography here. They were some parts where it worked surprisingly well, sometimes not - The final fight for example, looked a bit jarring.

The rotoscoping and poor 2D integration into 3D is nauseating at times, but I liked the main dynamic a lot. Rasputin was meh and that final confrontation was unnecessary.

From Don Bluth comes the enchanting animated film _Anastasia_. When the Grand Duchess offers a reward for her lost niece, Anastasia, a pair of charlatans in St. Petersburg attempt to cash in by getting a naive young girl to play the part, but they soon start to suspect that she could really be the lost princess. The cast is exceptional, and includes John Cusack, Meg Ryan, Christopher Lloyd, and Kelsey Grammer. The music is also excellent, with a number of charismatic and lyrical songs. However, the film tries to include some supernatural elements that don’t quite work. A beautiful and vibrant film, _Anastasia_ is delightfully entertaining.

In The Dark of the Night is one of the best villain songs in my opinion