Anastasia (1997)
Directed by Don Bluth
Ten years after she was separated from her family, an eighteen-year-old orphan with vague memories of the past sets out to Paris in hopes of reuniting with her grandmother. She is accompanied by two con men, who intend to pass her off as the Grand Duchess Anastasia to the Dowager Empress for a reward.
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10 films that influenced Anastasia
What critics say influenced Anastasia
This was Anastasia , the latest telling of the oft-told tale of a young woman posing as the long-lost Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last imperial ruler of Russia (it was 20th Century's Fox's own second version of the story, though 1956's Anastasia has little to do with 1997's).
The source for the new Anastasia is the Oscar-winning 1956 Ingrid Bergman movie, about the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, long rumored to have survived the execution of the Romanov family during the Russian revolution in 1917.
Besides, they make this Hollywood evergreen -- the pair who don't trust each other at first but eventually fall in love -- seem as fresh as Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade.
Borrowing heavily from "Cinderella" and "My Fair Lady" (Anastasia is the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn after a Paris shopping episode) this movie lacks originality to be sure.
From its beautiful handdrawn images to the three-dimensional computer-generated work, all shot in the 2.35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio (the first animated feature to be shot so since 1959's Sleeping Beauty), Anastasia truly looks and feels like an epic even when the goings-on are less so.
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One of them, Rasputin's I'm-so-evil theme song "In the Dark of the Night," is so cheesy it could have been a left-over from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
Strong in the belief that it was his vision that was truly heir to Walt Disney's own beliefs about the role of animation in popular entertainment, Bluth managed for a short time to give his old company its first serious competition ever in the mid-'80s, seemingly poised to take on the title of The New Walt, unclaimed since Disney's premature death in 1967, until his former employer got its head screwed back on and roared back to life in 1989, as The Little Mermaid wiped the floor with Bluth's All Dogs Go to Heaven , forever crushing Bluth's presence as a major player in American animation.
While the animation in Anastasia still doesn't quite match up to that of Disney's recent features, it's light years ahead of the likes of The Land Before Time, Balto, and even An American Tail (also by Anastasia's director, former Disney animator Don Bluth).
The longtime knock against animated filmmaker Don Bluth ("An American Tail," "The Land Before Time") is that his movies are usually great-looking but just as often fall short in the story department.
Obviously, director Don Bluth (who last visited Russia in An American Tail) is not offering a sober reconstruction of history here.
In his several-year run against the Disney titan, animation producer Don Bluth has turned out some respectable contenders, such as An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and The Land Before Time.
Directors Bluth and Goldman are Disney veterans who went on to create a couple of the most successful non-Disney animated features ever, including the Spielberg-produced "An American Tail."
The film was produced and directed by former Disney artists Don Bluth and Gary Goldman , whose credits include “ The Land Before Time ” and “An American Tail.”
1995's Pocahontas was the first stumble for the old masters, followed by a quick succession of movies that underperformed commercially and were met with unenthusiastically positive reviews of the "Well, this is okay, but what happened to The Lion King ?" variety.
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Anastasia is helmed by Don Bluth, who has been cranking out such modest and mediocre features as The Land Before Time and Rock-a-Doodle since leaving Disney in the '70s.
After that, Bluth was lost for a time, falling from distributor to distributor trying to find money to make Rock-A-Doodle , a flop that cost him his studio; for the next few years he and long-timer creative partner Gary Goldman cobbled together projects made on thin budgets with a fraction of the staff of their earlier work, on hectic schedules: Thumbelina and A Troll in Central Park were both released to chilly reviews and worse box-office in 1994, showing all the expected flaws of two projects cranked out in such quick succession, and the following year's The Pebble and the Penguin was no better.
In his several-year run against the Disney titan, animation producer Don Bluth has turned out some respectable contenders, such as An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and The Land Before Time.
Created by Disney rival Don Bluth ("An American Tale," "All Dogs Go To Heaven") as a launching project for 20th Century Fox's new animation house, "Anastasia" pretty much skips right over all that unpleasant slaughtered family business.
Strong in the belief that it was his vision that was truly heir to Walt Disney's own beliefs about the role of animation in popular entertainment, Bluth managed for a short time to give his old company its first serious competition ever in the mid-'80s, seemingly poised to take on the title of The New Walt, unclaimed since Disney's premature death in 1967, until his former employer got its head screwed back on and roared back to life in 1989, as The Little Mermaid wiped the floor with Bluth's All Dogs Go to Heaven , forever crushing Bluth's presence as a major player in American animation.