Anastasia

Rating: ***
Date Seen: 1998-02-11

With Anastasia, Fox has leaped into the Disney-created genre of cartoon musicals, and done a good job at it. Anastasia (voice by Meg Ryan), a Russian princess, is a child when the communist revolution breaks the family apart. After growing up as an orphan, having lost memory of childhood, she longs to find the home of which she was deprived. Along the way, she runs into Dimitri (John Cusack) and Vladimir (Kelsey Grammar), who think she is the perfect candidate to impersonate the lost Princess Anastasia and collect a large reward. They train her to behave like royalty, and since she really is the princess, learning it comes naturally. The evil Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) is out to thwart their plans and destroy Anastasia, as he was the one who brought about the death of her parents by way of a curse placed on the night of the Russian Revolution. (Do I sense a bit of historical revisionism here? ;)

Anastasia has lots of great visuals (both rendered and hand-drawn), music on par with recent Disney cartoon releases, and a star-studded cast of voices. The story is entertaining, if unrealistic. A movie worth seeing.