Anastasia Review
by "Dave Thompsen" (dthompsen AT dakotacom DOT net)November 24th, 1997
ANASTASIA
A Film Review by David Thompsen
Copyright 1997 by David Thompsen
Rating : ** OUT OF *****
Walt Disney studios may have finally met its match with the lush animation in Twentieth Century Fox's ANASTASIA. But judging by the latest efforts from the Don Bluth studios, the visuals are the only thing Fox has to brag about.
Disney's recent classics have occasionally stretched credibility in such films as POCAHONTAS, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, and to a lesser extent, HERCULES. With ANASTASIA, Fox has gone so far as to throw all facts completely out the window. Some may say - So what? It's just a kid's movie. Well... if you have young kids, beware, as they may be noticeably frightened by the visuals of a corpse-rotting Rasputin zombie, whose body parts continually fall off in a disconcertingly real way. Consider yourselves warned.
Nevertheless, the animation is quite stunning at times. Don Bluth has used computer animation extensively throughout, occasionally rivalling photographic quality. And yet in other scenes, the hand-drawn material seems of the Saturday-morning TV crowd, which leads me to wonder... was this rushed to market to combat Disney?
The plot, as anyone who had read history before knows, concerns the attempt to return Anastasia to her royal family after she was lost in the overthrow of the Romanovs in 1916. Not that ANASTASIA is much concerned with what really happened. As for the plot --- Go rent Disney's CANDLESHOE. You'll see 60% of ANASTASIA there.
Dave Thompsen
Email : [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
