Psycho's Movie Reviews #29: Anastasia (1997)

Anastasia is a 1997 American animated musical drama alternate history film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in association with Fox Animation Studios, distributed by 20th Century Fox, and starring the voices of Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Hank Azaria, Christopher Lloyd, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, and Angela Lansbury. Based on the legend of Grand Duchess Anastasia, the film follows an eighteen-year-old amnesiac Anastasia "Anya" Romanov who, hoping to find some trace of her deceased family, sides with con men who wish to take advantage of her likeness to the Grand Duchess; thus the film shares its plot with Fox's prior film from 1956, which, in turn, was based on the 1954 play of the same name by Marcelle Maurette. Unlike those treatments, this version adds a magical Grigori Rasputin as the main antagonist.

Anastasia premiered in New York City on November 14, 1997, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 21. The film was positively received by many critics and audiences, who praised the animation, themes, characters, voice performances, and the soundtrack, though it attracted criticism from some historians for entertaining such a retelling of the Grand Duchess. From a $50-million budget, Anastasia grossed over $139 million worldwide, making it the most profitable film from Bluth and Fox Animation Studios. It received nominations for several awards, including for Best Original Song ("Journey to the Past") and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score at the 70th Academy Awards. The success of Anastasia spawned various adaptations of the film into other media, including a direct-to-video spin-off film, a computer game, books, toys and a stage musical, which premiered in 2016.

Due to the creation of Fox Animation Studios, Anastasia was the first 20th Century Fox animated feature to be produced by its own animation division 20th Century Fox Animation.

Plot:

In 1916 Petrograd, Russia, at a ball celebrating the Romanov tricentennial, Dowager Empress Marie bestows a music box and a necklace inscribed with the words "Together in Paris" as parting gifts to her youngest granddaughter, eight-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia. The ball is suddenly interrupted by Grigori Rasputin, a sorcerer and the former royal adviser until he was exiled for treason. Seeking revenge, Rasputin sells his soul in exchange for an unholy reliquary, which he uses to curse the Romanovs, sparking the Russian Revolution. As revolutionaries besiege the palace, Marie and Anastasia escape through a secret passageway, aided by 10-year-old servant boy Dimitri. Rasputin confronts the two royals outside on a frozen river, only to fall through the ice and drown. The pair manage to reach a moving train, but as Marie climbs aboard, Anastasia falls and hits her head on the platform, subsequently suffering amnesia.

Ten years later, Russia is under communist rule and Marie has publicly offered 10 million rubles for the safe return of her granddaughter. Now working as a conman, a grown Dimitri and his friend/partner-in-crime, Vlad, search for an Anastasia look-alike to bring to Paris so they can collect the reward. Elsewhere, an 18-year-old Anastasia (now called "Anya") leaves the rural orphanage where she grew up, and begins a search for her family with her necklace as the only clue she has to finding them. Accompanied by a stray puppy she names Pooka, she decides to head to Paris, inspired by the inscription on her necklace, but finds herself unable to leave Russia without an exit visa. An old woman advises her to see Dimitri at the abandoned palace; there, the two men are impressed by Anya's resemblance to the "real" Anastasia, and decide to take her with them to Paris, completely unaware of her identity.

Meanwhile, Rasputin's albino bat minion, Bartok, is nearby and notices his master's dormant reliquary suddenly revived by Anya's presence; it drags him to limbo, where he finds an undead Rasputin has been confined. Enraged to hear that Anastasia escaped the curse, Rasputin sends his demonic minions from the reliquary to kill her. The demons sabotage the trio's train as they leave St. Petersburg, and later try to lure Anya into sleepwalking off their ship to France. The trio unwittingly foil both attempts, forcing Rasputin and Bartok to travel back to the surface to kill Anya personally. During their journey, as Dimitri and Vladimir teach Anya court etiquette and her family's history, Dimitri and Anya begin to fall in love.

The trio eventually reach Paris and go to see Marie, who has given up the search after meeting numerous impostors. Despite this, Marie's cousin Sophie quizzes Anya to confirm her identity. Though Anya offers every answer taught to her, Dimitri finally realizes she is the real Anastasia when she (without being taught) vaguely recalls how he helped her escape the palace siege. Sophie, also convinced, arranges a meeting with Marie at the Paris Opera House. There, Dimitri tries to establish an introduction but Marie refuses, believing Anya will be another imposter and has already heard of Dimitri's initial scheme to con her. Anya overhears the conversation and angrily leaves. Dimitri later abducts Marie in her car to force her to see Anya, finally convincing her when he presents the music box Anastasia dropped during their escape. As Marie and Anya converse, Anya regains her memories, and the two sing the lullaby the music box plays, a secret only the two of them knew. Marie recognizes Anya as Anastasia, and the two are joyfully reunited.

Marie offers Dimitri the reward money the next day, recognizing him as the servant boy who saved them, but he refuses it, surprising her, and leaves for Russia. At Anastasia's return celebration, Marie informs her of Dimitri's gesture, leaving Anastasia torn between staying or going with him. Anastasia walks off to the Pont Alexandre III, where Rasputin traps and attacks her. Dimitri returns to save her, but is attacked by a Black Pegasus statue enchanted by Rasputin. In the struggle, Anastasia manages to get hold of Rasputin's reliquary and crushes it under her foot, avenging her family as Rasputin's demons turn on him and destroy him, thus ending the Romanov curse forever.

In the aftermath, Anastasia and Dimitri reconcile; they elope, and Anastasia sends a farewell letter to Marie and Sophie, promising to return one day, which Marie happily accepts. Bartok shares a kiss with a female bat before bidding the audience farewell.

Production

Development:

In May 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman had signed a long-term deal to produce animated features with 20th Century Fox with the studio channelling more than $100 million in constructing the animation studio. They selected Phoenix, Arizona, for the location of the new animation studio because the state offered the company about $1 million in job training funds and low-interest loans for the state-of-the-art digital animation equipment, with a staff of 300 artists and technicians, a third of whom worked with Bluth and Goldman in Dublin, Ireland, for Sullivan Bluth Studios. For their first project, the studio insisted they select one out of a dozen existing properties which they owned where Bluth and Goldman suggested adapting The King and I and My Fair Lady, though Bluth and Goldman felt it would be impossible to improve on Audrey Hepburn's performance and Lerner and Loewe's score. Following several story suggestions, the idea to adapt Anastasia originated from Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Bill Mechanic. They would later adapt story elements from Pygmalion with the peasant Anya being moulded into a regal woman.

Early into production, Bluth and Goldman began researching the actual events through enlisting former CIA agents stationed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Around this same time, screenwriter Eric Tuchman had written a script that co-screenwriter Bruce Graham described as being "very adult, very based in reality, all about politics, and without any magic or comedy". Eventually, Bluth and Goldman decided the history of Anastasia and the Romanov dynasty was too dark for their film. In 1995, Graham and Susan Gauthier reworked Tuchman's script into a light-hearted romantic comedy. When Graham and Gauthier moved onto other projects, the husband-and-wife screenwriting team Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired for additional rewrites. Actress Carrie Fisher also made uncredited rewrites of the film, particularly the scene in which Anya leaves the orphanage for Paris.

For the villains, Bluth also did not take into consideration depicting Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and initially toyed with the idea of a police chief with a vendetta against Anastasia. Instead, they decided to have Grigori Rasputin as the villain with Goldman explaining it was because of "all the different things they did to try to destroy Rasputin and what a horrible man he really was, the more it seemed appetizing to make him the villain". In reality, Rasputin was already dead when the Romanovs were assassinated. In addition to this, Bluth created the idea for Bartok, the albino bat, as a sidekick for Rasputin. "I just thought the villain had to have a comic sidekick, just to let everyone know that it was all right to laugh. A bat seemed a natural friend for Rasputin. Making him a white bat came later – just to make him different." Composers Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens recalled being at Au Bon Pain in New York City where Rasputin and Bartok were pitched, and being dismayed at the decision to go down a historically inaccurate route; they made their stage musical adaption "more sophisticated, more far-reaching, more political" to encompass their original vision.

Casting:

Bluth stated that Meg Ryan was his first and only choice for the title character. However, Ryan was indecisive about accepting the role due to its dark historical events. To persuade her, the animation team took an audio clip of Annie Reed from Sleepless in Seattle and created an animation reel based on it which was screened for her following an invitation to the studio. "I was blown away that they did that", Ryan later confessed, and accepted the role. Before Ryan was cast, Broadway singer and actress Liz Callaway was brought in to record several demos of the songs hoping to land a job in background vocals, but the demos were liked well enough by songwriters that they were ultimately used in the final film. John Cusack openly admitted after being cast that he couldn't sing, in which his singing duties were performed by Jonathan Dokuchitz. Goldman had commented that originally, as with the rest of the cast, they were going to have Ryan record her lines separately from the others, with Bluth reading the lines of the other characters to her. However, after Ryan and the directors were finding the method to be too challenging when her character was paired with Dimitri, she and Cusack recorded the dialogue of their characters together, with Goldman noting "It made a huge difference."

Peter O'Toole was considered for the role of Rasputin, but Christopher Lloyd was hired because of his popularity from the Back to the Future trilogy. Bartok was initially written for Woody Allen, but the studio was reluctant to hire him following revelations of his relationship with his ex-partner Mia Farrow's adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Martin Short was also considered, but Hank Azaria won the role ten minutes into his audition.

Score/Soundtrack:

The film score was composed, co-orchestrated, and conducted by David Newman, whose father, Alfred Newman, composed the score of the 1956 film of the same name. The songs, of which "Journey to the Past" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, were written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. The first song they wrote for the project was "Once Upon a December"; it was written during a heatwave "so [they were] sweating and writing winter imagery". The film's soundtrack was released in CD and audio cassette format on October 28, 1997.

Release:

20th Century Fox scheduled for Anastasia to be released on November 21, 1997, notably a week after the 1997 re-release of Disney's The Little Mermaid. Disney claimed it had long-planned for the 17-day re-release to coincide with a consumer products campaign leading into Christmas and the film's home video release in March 1998, as well continue the tradition of re-releasing their films within a seven-to eight-year interval. In addition to this, Disney would release several competing family films including Flubber on the following weekend, as well as a double feature of George of the Jungle and Hercules. As a response, Disney refused to advertise for Anastasia on the ABC program The Wonderful World of Disney, and banned its corporate sponsors from airing film clips during their television commercials.

Commenting on the fierce competition between the two films, Disney spokesman John Dreyer brushed off allegations of studio rivalry, claiming, "We always re-release our movies around holiday periods". However, Fox executives refused to believe Dreyer's statement with Bill Mechanic responding that "It's a deliberate attempt to be a bully, to kick sand in our face. They can't be trying to maximize their own business; the amount they're spending on advertising is ridiculous... It's a concentrated effort to keep our film from fulfilling its potential."

Box Office:

A limited release of Anastasia at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on the weekend of November 14, 1997, grossed $120,541. The following week, the wide release of Anastasia in the United States made $14.1 million (for an average of about $5,692 from 2,478 theatres), which placed it as the #2 film (behind Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) for the weekend of November 21–23, 1997. By the end of its theatrical run, Anastasia had grossed $58.4 million in the North American box office and $81.4 million internationally. The worldwide gross totalled up to about $139.8 million, making it Don Bluth's highest-grossing film to date and beating out his next highest-grossing film, An American Tail, by about $55 million. This was Don Bluth's first financially successful film since All Dogs Go to Heaven.

My Review:

While I know the movie is not historically accurate, I don't care! The movie is fiction after all- based on a true story (of Anastasia's rumored escape and women who claimed to be her), loosely, mind you- but perhaps it is not as unlikely as it seems: when the remains of the Romanovs were discovered back in 1991, Alexei (her brother,the Czarvitch) and one of the Grand Duchesses were missing. And with age analysis of the bones, scientists believe that the missing daughter is in fact Anastasia, and not one of her sisters, Olga, Tatiana, or Maria. But who really knows what happened? My opinion of the movie is that it is wonderful. It draws you into the world of the lost Russian Princess, to a time that is "far away, long ago", that doesn't exist anymore. The music and animation are stunning, and the photo research of St. Petersburg is amazing! Take the Catherine Palace and the magnificent gate you see, as well as the city itself. The 3-D animation is amazing; you look like you could reach out and touch it! The music is truly magical; "Once Upon a December" is haunting yet beautiful. I own the soundtrack- I listen to it frequently, to help me relax.

But what I love best about the movie is the romance that occurs between Anya (Anastasia) and Dimitri. It starts out as a con, a trick for money, and turns into a love story. I think it shows that people really do have good in them, and that true love really exists. It's also heartwarming to think that a young boy who saved the girl he liked (princess or not) later helps her restore her identity and find a true place (in this case, happily together with him). "Anastasia" is really one of the best animated movies of all time! I'd recommend it to anyone, and advise historical literalists to look beyond the fiction and let yourself be taken on a "Journey to the Past" with the romance, comedy, and magic of this story; I give this film a deserved 10/10.

{There's just one thing that really annoys me - everyone thinks that this is a Disney film... IT'S NOT!!!}.