Review: Anastasia (1997) · 6:53am Dec 14th, 2015
What’s with me and watching movies so historically inaccurate that they offend me?
So I watched Don Bluth’s animated fantasy/musical/rape of history that is Anastasia.
And, as you can probably tell by the opening sentences…I hated it. A lot.
The animation style that Bluth favors, a strange, seemingly rotoscoped style of hyper realistic and fluid movements, just makes everything firmly tumble down into the depths of the uncanny valley, and never return. Pretty much every frame of animation is unnerving on some level or another, with either the eyes being completely and utterly dead, the mouths opening FAR too wide to be natural, or the entire body spasmodically flopping about like an ineptly controlled marionette. It’s all rather unappealing, and it just keeps going for an hour and fifteen minutes.
Asides from the animation, the story itself is a pile of tropes and cliches, that, in all honesty, have been done hundreds of times before, in hundreds of other films. Now, obviously, given that this story is obviously invoking fairy tales (albeit with historical characters, something I will address on later), it will obviously share some tropes. But the real crime here is that the film does nothing unique or different with the tropes. it does nothing to set itself apart from the ocean of Disney knock-offs, and, in many instances, I get a sneaking feeling that Bluth is outright ripping Disney off, either in animation style, story telling choices, or in the CONSTANT songs.
SPEAKING OF SONGS, all of them are bland at best, horrible at worst. David Newman’s score, which managed to net an Oscar nomination (for some reason) does have some nice orchestration and color to it, but lacks a true spark or sense of uniqueness. In many instances, he seems to be either mimicking Alan Menken’s sound (which makes sense given this film’s slavish ripping off of basically every Disney princess movie ever), or just general “vaguely fantastical music”. The real shame is that David Newman’s father is none other then Alfred Newman, who was one of the most influential and respected film composers who ever lived. At the very least, one could have hoped that David Newman could have crafted a score that was, at the very least, not so horrifically generic, especially considering his family’s immense presence in the film music industry (his uncle Lionel Newman was a well respected arranger/conductor/composer, his brother is 12 time Oscar nominee Thomas Newman, and his cousin is renowned and beloved singer-songwriter/composer Randy Newman).
In regards to the actual songs themselves, the lyrics for me, offer the real problem. Mostly made out of easily predictable rhymes and verses, they do little to distinguish themselves from any other generic 90s animated movie song. On top of that, they are horrifically intrusive, and the film strings almost a dozen of them together with wild abandon, rarely giving the film time to breathe and simply tell it’s story. I mean, I get that, as a musical, there’d be songs, but really, for a film that’s only an hour and fifteen minutes, we get, at most, 15 minutes before some sort of a musical number cuts in again, however briefly. It get annoying VERY quickly.
The voice acting isn’t that good either. For some reason, Meg Ryan was chosen for Anastasia, in a move that must have been for her star power. Same goes for John Cusack, as bland as ever in the role of the disgustingly generic Dmitri. The duo have minimal chemistry, and it’s painfully obvious that they recorded their lines separately, at different times. There’s no organic flow between them, and each line is delivered with no breaks between them, so it just comes across as a barrage of dialogue, with no time to let it breathe or properly sink in as to what they are saying. Kelsey Grammar is also wasted in his role as Vladimir, as he only gets to do a silly Russian accent, and little else. Also, his singing voice, while not HORRIBLE, isn’t that great either. Probably the only actors here who are having FUN in their parts are Christopher Lloyd as Rasputin, who’s far too hammy to be taken seriously as a villain, Angela Lansbury as The Dowager Empress Marie, who really is just Angela Lansbury being Angela Lansbury, and Bernadette Peters as Sophie Stanislovskievna Somorkov-Smirnoff, Marie’s first cousin and lady-in-waiting. At the very least, Peters is having the time of her life in the part, complete with silly Russian accent.
Now we can finally address the core issue with this film: The fact that it takes the very real, and very tragic story of the Russian Royal Family, and turns it into a cookie-cutter fairy tale with a happy ending.
In many ways, this horrific mutilation of the historical record is one of the most offensive things I’ve ever seen. One particular highlight of the film’s disregard for the actual events is describing the sentiment in pre-Revolutionary Russia as “a spark of unhappiness”. A spark? Really? I suppose we’re just going to forget that, in 1916, Russia was embroiled in World War 1, that was costing thousands of lives, while the peasants starved to death in the freezing winters due to lack of food? Oh, what’s that? Anastasia gets to be at a fancy ball with her family? Oh, okay, I guess we’ll just ignore the starving masses outside. Furthermore, let’s also remember the fact that, in no reality, much less our own, did Rasputin sell his soul to the devil. Sure, Rasputin was a creepy guy, who probably, at the very least, practiced some sort of witchcraft, but selling his soul? Cut me a break. Best part is that they blame him for the deaths of the Romanov family, as in the film, Rasputin puts a curse on them. That’s right, they blame the entire Russian Revolution, and the ensuing Civil War which killed MILLIONS, on a wizard. That’s as if you blamed the Holocaust on an evil witch doctor or something. By shifting the blame from Lenin, and onto some entirely mythological boogie man, you completely undermine the tragedy of the deaths of millions, by turning it into a children’s fantasy with no regards for reality. Now, I’m not asking that this film be an in depth look into the final years of the Romanovs or anything, since, well, we already have one (Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1971 epic Nicholas and Alexandra). What I do ask however, is a respect towards history, especially such a horrifically dark chapter as the rise of Communism, and the final days of the Tsars. Also, for a film that is set almost entirely in 1926, there is not a single mention of Lenin or Communism, or the struggles and horrors that the Russian people were subject to. Beyond a throwaway joke about all the paper work using red ink, the entire Communist regime is ignored as if it didn’t exist. For me, it’s equivalent of turning the story of Anne Frank into a fantasy where Hitler is an evil wizard with a pet bat, and where the only mention of Nazi’s is one jerk with a funny German accent. That’s how little Anastasia cares about it’s history.
So yeah, by all means, I loathe this film. It’s offensive to pretty much the entirety of Russian history, and makes light of the suffering of millions, all so that Don Bluth can indulge in his relentless, selfish attempts at beating Disney, which, by this point, and firmly surpassed him in every conceivable way. This film is a waste of time, and above all, is offensive to history itself.
half a star.
I liked All Dogs Go to Heaven, and The Secret of NIMH is almost universally acclaimed. And Land Before Time is nostalgic for me.
Although right now I count it extremely fortunate you haven't seen Bartok the Magnificent.
Glad I dodged that bullet.
What I've always found shocking is how well-received this film was and continues to be. Now granted, I'm not gonna harp on the animation quite as much as you did; I really kinda love Bluth's animation, and while this isn't necessarily his best, it is still very pretty to look at, even if the human characters can be a bit off at times. I did not know until you pointed it out, however, how responsible Bluth was for the story, and really, he should've known better. It's very odd too, considering this was a guy who's finest work was born out of a philosophy that children can handle dark material in an animated movie so long as there's a happy ending, but then again, he's been in a funk since the 90s and the opening of the Disney Renaissance and has never quite gotten out of it (though hopefully that might change if his Dragon's Lair movie Kickstarter actually takes off).
But yeah, friggin' critics loved this for some reason (the bloody Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus reads "Beautiful animation, an affable take on Russian history, and strong voice performances make Anastasia a winning first film from Fox animation studios" and one critic had the balls to even call it a fairy tale princess story), and I can only think there were two reasons for that. (1) It was the 90s and it was still a novel idea in the West to have a project like this which engaged Russian characters with mainstream Western culture, kind of a "Make nice with the Russkies in a small cultural way now that the Cold War's over" sort of thing, and (2) it was Fox Animation's first major animation project, and some critics might've just been craving a challenge to Disney in animation at the height of the Disney Renaissance, so were willing to give this film far more passes than it deserved for its beautiful animation, and unusual writing and voice casting (though really it's kind of generic star-studded voice casting when you think about it). But yeah, to this day I know of a lot of people who still love this movie (though these are the same people probably inclined to like Pocahontas as well, and this film is somehow worse than that one in the insulting historical inaccuracies department).
So really, this film more than anything else came out at the right time, and that's probably the only reason it did so well. If this came out right now, with Putin reviled by most in the West (at least in the social justice and liberties department), the Internet far more at our disposal than it was in 1997, and people in general a lot more cynical in certain respects and most definitely when it comes to such a horrible sanitization of history such as this, I think it'd get raked over the coals no matter how nice the animation is. So yeah, 1990s was probably the only time this film could work with critics and audiences as well as it did, but as a historian, it offends me so so much.
Come now, it wasn't that bad. I mean, there was... um....
Oh wait, what about... uh...
Well, at least there was... uh...
Okay yeah, this movie isn't good. I didn't like it when I was a kid (my sister did, though, for what it's worth), and I probably still wouldn't like it today. I think this was around when Bluth really started getting hammered by Executive Meddling, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe I just have a subconscious aversion to animated movies that play fast and loose with history (probably why I don't like Pocahontas all that much either).
3617933 If Bluth wanted to avoid meddling, he could have just stepped down at the least kept the little integratey he still had left
I disagree strongly.
"Anastasia" was a wonderful film, and quite likely the very best of Don Bluth's work.