Don Bluth's Anastasia (1997)

After languishing in the 90s with terrible films like Rock-A-Doodle, A Troll in Central Park, Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin (which he actually took his name off of, though I don't want to know what that says about his thoughts on the others), Don Bluth finally had another hit with the very Disney-inspired Anastasia. Unfortunately, it was his last, as the next film he made with Fox Animation, Titan A.E. (which I think is vastly underrated), was a flop.

Thankfully, this, like Titan, holds up pretty well these days. It has the Disney formula, but still the Bluth personality, so it evens out. Laundry list!:

-OK, yes, the CGI is pretty iffy, especially considering the strides Disney had made in integrating hand-drawn animation and CGI props/backgrounds/elements. But there's ultimately not THAT much of it, and it's still used well even when it sticks out.

-The voice cast is big name, but they're well-chosen for their respective roles, and some of them already had good voice-over experience by this point. Meg Ryan (who I'm usually not a huge fan of, though I hardly hate her) makes for a spirited Anya/Anastasia, John Cusack is very charming and Cusack-y as Dimitri, Kelsey Grammer is terrific as always as Vlad, Bernadette Peters is very fun and French as Sophie, Angela Lansbury is in perfect grandma mode (she also gets some real pathos out of the Dowager Empress' weariness with pretenders), while Christopher Lloyd and Hank Azaria make for a fun pair of villains.

-I honestly don't mind this screwing around with history as much as I do with, say, Pocahontas, but there's a couple of reasons for that. One, this is based more on the 1956 live-action musical than *actual* history; Bluth was given a choice between two Fox musicals to remake in animation, and he chose this one. The other reason is that, well, this is well-written and doesn't try at preach at the audience for 90 minutes. It's a solid romantic comedy with some thrills and even legitimately heartwarming drama as Anya searches for an identity; the scene where she and the Dowager Empress finally realize that she's the real Anastasia belongs in the hall of "Great Cinematic Reunions".

-Wanna know the other choice Bluth had? My Fair Lady. I kind of wanna go to the alternate universe where THAT happened.

-The character animation looks a touch rotoscoped at points, but is otherwise excellent. I especially love how (as with most good animated films) the main characters subtly reflect their voice talents' physical natures at times.

-The songs aren't quite Disney-level, but they're still quite enjoyable. "A Rumor in St. Petersburg" is a very energetic way to start things off, 
"Journey to the Past" is a great little "I Want" song, Rasputin's "In The Dark of the Night" sounds like it should be on a metal album, and "Once Upon A December" proves to be quite the haunting little ditty.

-Jumping off the discussion we were having about female characters offing the villain in the Disney thread, I like that Anya gets to do so here by crushing Rasputin's reliquary. His subsequent demise is gleefully gruesome.

Any thoughts?

Well, what about live-action films? They do this kind of thing all the time in "Based On A True Story" movies.

Any thoughts on the film otherwise?

I can understand that line of reasoning, though it honestly doesn't bother me THAT much since I enjoy both this and many other "Based On A True Story" movies, although to be fair this never REALLY claimed to be a "Learn the truth!" movie.

Honestly, watching it again makes me sadder for Don Bluth. He's still working, trying to get films off the ground, teaching animation classes, and he even did a short animated take on the Rapunzel story for a Scissor Sisters video a few years back. But he used to be one of the top dogs of theatrical American animation, so it's just depressing that he hasn't made an honest-to-God FILM in 12 years.

Ew, no, I'm not a big Bakshi fan. I appreciate that he tried to make truly adult animation, but his storytelling instincts tend to be pretty scattershot. And his imagery ranges from "inspired dementedness" to "goddamn ugly".

Yeah, NIMH is definitely his best film, though for me Anastasia and Titan A.E. recapture some of that cool, dark and weird feeling. And American Tail still holds up, if only for the fact that it doesn't shy away from the darker side of what real immigrants had to deal with. After that, it gets kind of scattershot: Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven have some great imagery, but feel patchwork as stories; Rock-A-Doodle feels half-assed on almost every level; and the unholy trinity of Troll in Central Park, Thumbelina and Pebble and the Penguin makes me want to vomit.

NIMH is just classic all-around: utterly gorgeous animation, a legitimately mature story, great voicework (Derek Jacobi, John Carradine AND Dom DeLuise in the same movie, bitches!), and Jerry Goldmith's majestic score.

Regarding Bakshi, I also never really feel an emotional connection to it. There's some stuff I find interesting because of the limitations he had to work with (his TV work in the 80s, Fire and Ice, Wizards), but most of his stuff, even his more personal 70s films and the stuff I like, leaves me utterly cold.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Some guys touch you some guys don't. I hear ya.

Thanks. Also, Cool World (his last big studio film) sucks a fat one. Yeah, yeah, I know he got totally fucked over on it, but the final product is what I judge, and I deem it crappy. There's a few minor bright spots (the voice actors are mostly professional ones doing what they can to save nothing roles, Brad Pitt is trying but failing, occasionally something visually intriguing happens), but it just fails completely as a story.

I take it you too love the moment where she straight-up kills the villain? Heh heh heh.

Also, I am deeply amused that Dimitri's singing voice sounds NOTHING like John Cusack. He's good, but clearly actor-singer synchronizing wasn't quite their top priority. Jim Cummings does a great job of singing Rasputin's song, even though he again isn't really trying to sound like Lloyd.

 The hell does that even mean, anyway? I've seen that phrase pop up a lot in pop culture, even in non-Russian films.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarleyQuinn22 

It's Russian for goodbye.

Ah. So, it's basically the Russian equivalent to a clever one-liner after offing a bad guy.... AWESOME!

And we seem to have had this conversation before, RD, but I think there's a lot more to mainstream animation than most people give it credit for. Sure, there's a lot of banal or mediocre stuff, but even the popular stuff can be just as meaningful (as we've seen here and in the Disney thread).

There's also loads of great TV animation, much of it "mainstream". Although yes, when it comes to mainstream "family entertainment" in general, there's a lot of bad shit. The Disney Channel seems to thrive on it right now.

Also, this is another one like Prince of Egypt where I'm surprised nobody snapped up the rights to make a stage musical. Does Disney just have that much of a stranglehold?

Well, they did *fine* by my recollection, they just weren't mega-hits.

Man, I should start some crappy animated movie threads or something to see if my animated thread mojo keeps up...

One last interesting little tidbit: This is one of the few animated feature films done in CinemaScope, albeit a modernized version.

Well, to be fair it does briefly say that there was already discontent in Russia, but Rasputin's curse amplified it.

Honestly, I think it all comes down to story. Pocahontas used its historical inaccuracy to preach at us, whereas Anastasia doesn't really pass judgment on the Czar or his politics; no matter what you think, a little girl losing her family to terrible violence is awful.

And it's not like the film is perfect; Dimitri's sudden appearance in the otherwise awesome final showdown suggests a cut scene, and there are some awfully big coincidences in the assemblage of our main players early on.

But hey, I can live with that as long as it's done well.