By Katarina Spoilers

"Anastasia" is a wonderful movie with engaging characters and fantastic animation. The main character is Anya, a young Russian orphan. Her only clue to her forgotten past is a necklace that says, "Together in Paris". She meets up with a pair of conmen, Vlad and Dmitri, who offer to help her get to Paris if she pretends to be the princess Anastasia for the Dowager Empress. The music is beautiful and memorable, with Liz Callaway of Broadway fame as Anya's singing voice. My one major gripe with this movie is the villain, Rasputin, and his sidekick, Bartok. I think that a better villain could have been found. Rasputin, voiced by Christopher Lloyd, is over-the-top and rather unconvincing. His unbelievablity stems from the fact that he is a living corpse with evil magical powers who hangs out with a talking bat. If you ignore the villain and just enjoy the scenes with the good guys, this movie is quite wonderful.

By Sherrié Spoilers

Based on the mystery of the lost Romanov Grand Duchess, this movie revolves around a "what if?" question - with a unique ending.

The animation is excellent. The CGI combines very well with the cell animation, and some note-worthy scenes are definintly the "Dream Waltz Sequence" and "Paris Holds the Key", two of my personal favorites. The music is also well done, and is one of my favorite soundtracks. As for the characters, most of them are some personal favorites.

Dimitri, the male lead, isn't your typical animated man. He's not a prince, and he was purposely drawn to be "unattractive" (funny, since he has a huge fandom and most ladies consider him to be one the sexiest men in animation - myself included!) His voice is well cast, and his change throughout the movie is great. Anya, the lead female and main character, is also well done overall. Her voice might throw you (it's cast by Meg Ryan), but her character design is also excellent and her attitude is snappy, fiery, yet she's also a dreamer who wants to find her family. Vladimir plays his role well as the caring "father-figure" to both Dimitri and Anya, and Pooka, Anya's playful puppy, is just what he's supposed to be; playful and fun. Sophie takes her role on as the Parisian native who loves her city, and Marie is cast extremely well by Angela Lansbury. The only characters I was not pleased with were the villians, Rasputin and Bartok. Rasputin comes across as extremely cheesy, corny, and dumb. He was originally meant for comic relief, but he's not much to laugh at. Bartok, in my opinion, comes across as slightly annoying, but he doesn't hang around Rasputin for the entire movie.

All in all, it doesn't follow history exactly to the point, but it leaves the question of Anastasia a mystery in the very end, and comes off as a great romance and adventure. I'd definitly recommend it - in fact, I've converted a few "non-animation" friends to this movie as well!

By JessKat Spoilers

Anastasia could well have been an excellent - or at least good - film, if they only would have come up with an original princess story that would have nothing to do with history. They could have toyed with the story all they wanted and it wouldn't have bothered anyone (or at least me), but now the audience is left grinding their teeth towards the historical inaccuracies, glaring plotholes and changing of the original story.

First of all, Rasputin is a very weak villain. In the movie, we never really get to know WHY he is so obsessed with murdering all the Romanovs. In fact, the real Rasputin was the empress' most trusted advicors, regardless of what the Czar thought of him. All we get in the film is that he has magical powers and he does nothing with them but uses them to hunt down the last of the Romanovs. He also has an annnoying sidekick, little bat named Bartok who contributes nothing to the story. The other characters, Anya/Anastasia and Dimitri are okay-ish characters, though nothing special. Dimitri seems very interesting at first. Yay, finally a character who's not all goody-goody, isn't drawn as the perfect supermodel, and who actually has some flaws in him! He seems great at first - but after he falls in love with Anya, he turns into a bland romantical hero, just like so many of his predecessors. Anya/Anastasia herself has a nice outlook, she's a feisty redhead with an attitude and she doesn't look like a run-off-the-mill typical animated princess. It's a shame that the story built around her is so weak, otherwise she would have made a great character.

The animation is rotoscoped, which looks realistic, but is in fact traced off of real people and the animation drawn on top of their movements. This appeals to some people, but for me it's nothing but copying and I don't really consider it animation. The CGI looks good in some parts of the film, in others it just sticks out like a sore thumb (like the stone horse coming to life).

All in all, Bluth certainly could have done better if only he would have dared to leave the story of Anastasia alone and come up with a completely original story. But the film has its moments and is okay to watch when there's nothing else to do.

By Mario

Could've been something grand, but turned out to be something else. While not an especially disastrous or boring animated movie as such, Anastasia is one of Don Bluth's more wildly patchwork movies. Whether it was the inconsistent animation or the painfully jerky computer graphics or the unbelievable villains or the bland songs, Anastasia left a lot of room for improvement. Kids won't care about the inaccuracies in history. They'll probably like the characters and the story. I'll admit that Anastasia gets occasionally saved by Anastasia and company's witty interactions with each other. But too many appearances by Rasputin and Bartok pretty much ruined what good there was in the movie. Their incredibly lousy song was the deathblow. Any critic who said this was Don Bluth's return to greatness needs to take a closer look.

By Angie Spoilers

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