The last surviving child of the Russian Royal Family joins two con men to reunite with her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, while the undead Rasputin seeks her death.
Directors: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Stars: Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, Angela Lansbury.
Adam Shankman ... choreographer / dancer
borrowed dvd
Per the featurette, the first animated feature film from Fox.
12 songs in the Soundtracks. Only KG, BP and AL did their own singing.
The crew is full of names of unknown actors who did reference work: where they filmed a scene which the animators then used to create the drawings. This is what I dislike most about the film. I definitely felt an artificiality about the humans in motion, as though that motion was derivative of something else, and there's the explanation. (At first I thought perhaps it was CGI, but the featurette debunks that; the CGI was used for fluid camera movement on backgrounds, for duplicating drawn animation, and for coloring cells.)
The subplot with Rasputin feels like it could be excised and we'd still have a complete film. The Rasputin portions do not blend/weave in with the rest of the identity/romance portions, and the transitions feel very abrupt. So far as I can determine those scenes are the only reason to animate the film, and it's a poor reason, since special effects can produce similar results with live action.
I suppose the other reason to animate the story is that musicals are not accepted with live actors any more, except on B'way.
This film put me to sleep multiple times. While awake I wondered if MR was the voice of Anastasia (yes). I also recognized KG and AL. Surprisingly, I did not notice that was BP, but it's a fairly small role.
It's an ok story, but made me want to find the Anastasia (1956) version with Ingrid Bergman, but I rated it 6 some time in the past, so I'll just move on.
Rated 7.1 (100,174)
Rated 7.1 (100,174)
Fox, dir. Bluth & Goldman; 6-
