Sharon Movie: Anastasia (1997)

Anastasia (1997)

Director: Don Bluth and Gary Goldman
Writers: Susan Gauthier and Bruce Graham
Genre: Animation/Adventure/Drama/Family/Fantasy

Story

Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst) is a young princess living in the early 20th century with her family when an evil sorcerer named Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) curses the royal family. The curse is supposed to kill off every member of the royal family including Anastasia, but she gets away with the help of Dimitri (John Cusack), a young servant of the palace. While fleeing from the evil Rasputin, Anastasia falls and loses her memory. Later when she grows up, she is trying to find her family in Paris where her necklace says to go. Dimitri is now looking for a ticket to the good life and holding auditions for people who could be Anastasia so he can get the reward. When the real Anastasia finds Dimitri (neither knows she is the real Anastasia) and they head for Paris to meet the grandmother, Rasputin comes back to try and finish what he started. Although Anastasia has no idea she is a Princess they are ironically trying to prepare her to be the Princess to trick her grandmother into thinking she is really Anastasia. (Sorry this seemed unnecessarily longwinded)


Everything Else

The directing is hard to talk about with most animated films, but the character interactions seemed to work fairly well in Anastasia. There were times in the story that did not seem to line up very well or were just a bit to coincidental, but this is an animated kids movie so what do you expect. Overall the directing was sound and the animation was good enough to keep the excitement up. There were only a few times that the movie lulled into an uneventful moment, but even my two and a half month old daughter enjoyed most of the movie.


The voice acting on all parts was good; although I can’t think of any animated film where the voice acting was not good. It was interesting that the young Anastasia was Kirsten Dunst and the older Anastasia was Meg Ryan. I am not sure there was much need for the two different voices, but it worked well either way. John Cusack was good as the voice of Dimitri and then there was the obvious Angela Lansbury. Christopher Lloyd was the voice of Rasputin and may have had the most challenging voice acting part, but still it seems like voice acting is hard to mess up or at least compared to live action.


The music in Anastasia was good and the songs seemed short and quick which was a good change of pace. It was a musical with all of the song and dance, but each time they really got into it they got it over with quickly. This made the movie seem to flow along much quicker than a lot of the live action musicals I have seen recently.

The Real Deal

I can enjoy a good animated film from time to time, but as an adult I haven’t liked many animated films that weren’t computer generated. Anastasia was good, but the animation almost seemed dry and out dated. It was much like I remember Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast being, but now it looks rough compared to the computer generated animation out there. This was a great movie for the whole family though since I thought it was pretty good and even my baby girl enjoyed it (or at least most of it). The one major complaint I have was the anticlimactic ending. It just didn’t really do anything for me.


Sharon’s Take

I have to apologize to David and to all of the loyal readers out there. I'm sure Sharon Movie May does not appeal to the masses. I was in middle school when Anastasia came out, and I was so excited about seeing it. It didn't disappoint me, and was a wonderful rags to riches to true love over-coming all story with great music. In fact, I purchased the piano music so I can play the songs myself.

The Short Version

Raw Score: 722,981
Sharon Movie? Yes

Dave's Movie Reviews is the place to find movie

reviews and discuss your thoughts.
Join the community by
Subscribing!

RSS feed or Email