While in America there is a certain amount of animation aimed at adults, mostly on television (contrary to your preconceived notions, The Simpsons is an adult program, not a children's one), almost all animated movies are forced to appeal to the kiddies in order to rake in the megabucks. Ever since 1989's The Little Mermaid, there has been a formula devised by Disney as the key to animation success, combining a heroic central character (often female) estranged from her parents, a nasty villain, and cute sidekicks for both villain and hero/ine. There has to be a show-stopping musical number, a final confrontation between good and evil, a Happy End, and an embarrassingamount of merchandising. Disney has amassed a tremendous fortune from this formula, and now other studios, in the words of Jimmy Durante, want ta get into da act.
Fox is the first out of the gate with Anastasia, made by the same people who made The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. Don Bluth, an ex-Disney animator, still seems to follow the Disney conventions closely in this film. Heaped onto the eminently adult story of the lost, assumed dead Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, are gratuitous and uninteresting musical numbers, a cartoonish villain (Rasputin, voiced by Christopher Lloyd, and cartoonish sidekicks.
Now, lest you get the impression I am panning this film, I must say a few things in praise. Though the comic sidekick Bartok the bat should in theory be annoying and obnoxious, he is voiced by Hank Azaria, who has proved with his years on the cast of The Simpsons that as a voice actor, he is a talent on the same level with the great Mel Blanc and June Foray. Azaria's delivery and wheedling tone are unmatched. He is one of the film's greatest assets.
The story itself, based on a play that was previously adapted into the Oscar-winning 1956 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner, is a thrilling and sometimes moving one. Can a young woman with a mysterious past be molded into a figure who may or may not still be alive? Is she really Anastasia? The movie dispenses with much of the mystery by portraying her as the true, amnesiac Anastasia (Meg Ryan) from the outset. Rather than being her story, in fact, it seems it is mostly that of conman Dmitri (John Cusack), who with his partner Vlad (Kelsey Grammer), seems to have stumbled across the perfect Anastasia doppelganger. When it seems that they have found the real McCoy in her, he is filled with disgust for his earlier mercenary plans. He feels compelled to forget about the reward for his reuniting Anastasia with her exiled grandmother (Angela Lansbury).
Stripped of its cartoonish elements, Anastasia could have been an animated film for the ages, one that is fully the peer of the now-classic Beauty and the Beast. Unfortunately, the Rasputin scenes, which seem almost tacked on to the main plot, are a detriment to the whole, particularly the inevitable final showdown between good and evil. It had been so long since we had previously seen Rasputin that his return was an extremely unwelcome surprise. I was just getting absorbed with the mature and serious storyline. Oh well, the movie survives this scene and all of the cartoonish scenes. It's just that it could have been so much better.
Allow me to digress for a moment and speak about history. This film warps it by portraying Rasputin as the cause of the death of the Romanovs, not the Bolsheviks. Why is it that Anastasia is not condemned for its creative use of history as the films of Oliver Stone are? End of rant.
The cast ranges from excellent (Azaria) to very good, with one notable exception. Meg Ryan brings nothing to the title role but a famous name and an excess of spunk (and I hate spunk). Oh well, with luck, Anastasia will lead to more animated films and hopefully, films which follow the strict Disney formula less scrupulously. The upcoming Antz, Chicken Run (from the creator of Wallace and Gromit), and Planet Ice seem to instill confidence in such a hope. It seems a shame to waste such great art on childish tastes as well as evil mercenary corporations.
Three stars
Copyright 1998 by Dale G. Abersold
