Anastasia Review ( Detroit News)

Lush visuals, small details lift 'Anastasia' to classic heights

REVIEW: "Anastasia",

Rated G

By Susan Stark/ Detroit News Film Critic

From the moment you see a champagne-colored dawn over the mauve-shadowed snowdrifts outside St. Petersburg, you know you are in a magical world that exists only in the most imaginatively, fastidiously, lovingly produced animated films.

That's an image from the first part of Anastasia, a gorgeous new film by veteran animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Their masterful way with the art form is evident right through to the end, and not just in the imagery.

When, at last, it's time for the princess and the hero to kiss, her little dog pulls his ears over his eyes so he doesn't have to watch "the mushy part." That's the kind of touch that separates the best animators from the rest.

Anastasia brings heart, humor, drama and honest sentiment to the story of a young woman who believes she may be a princess. Children, especially little girls, are going to adore this film; parents will find themselves delightfully surprised by its grace notes and flashes of wit.

The real-life mystery of the lost Russian princess serves as the story's point of departure. She's the only child of the last czar and was believed by many to have survived when the rest of the family was slaughtered at the start of the revolution. From there, quickly and completely, the film moves to the realm of fantasy to dramatize the quest of a high-spirited orphan named Anya.

In the company of a con man, a former courtier and a little mutt who has adopted her, she runs away to St. Petersburg and then to Paris, where the late czar's mother lives. There she hopes to discover her identity, as well as the family and home for which she yearns.

Throughout her journey, Anya is hounded by the malevolent, vengeful spirit of the "mad monk" Rasputin, who assumes a variety of forms to block her way and lead her astray.

The film uses Russian history merely as a springboard for a beautifully imagined tale of a girl who comes to understand what it means to be a princess in deeply personal terms and who, by her love, transforms a rogue into a romantic hero. Finally this is a film that says lineage counts in the case of only a very few princesses, a film that says every young woman who follows her heart is a princess.

Meg Ryan brings equal amount of sunshine and spunk to her voice work for the title character. John Cusack, who speaks for Dimitri the con man, begins in an appropriately glib vein, then takes on the more muted, pensive tone of a wise guy transformed to a man by love.

Others who provide key voices: Kelsey Grammer as Cusack's blustery co-conspirator; Christopher Lloyd as the satanic Rasputin; Hank Azaria, in a thrillingly imaginative vocal performance as Bartok, a comic white bat forced to do Rasputin's bidding; Angela Lansbury, at once warm and utterly aristocratic as the Empress Marie; and Bernadette Peters as Lansbury's amiable busybody of a lady-in-waiting.

Clearly Bluth and Goldman have one of the starriest vocal ensembles ever assembled for an animated film, and, true to the tradition of classical animation, the characters resemble the actors physically as well as vocally. That's especially clear in the case of Lansbury's Marie, but fans of Ryan and Cusack will also see more than a few hints of the actor behind the animated character.

The musical numbers, by Broadway veterans Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, range from serviceable to memorable, although they are fewer and shorter than some in Disney's most recent animated films.

Peters has the showstopper in "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)," played out in high style in the city's chic shopping district, but the melody that lingers on and on is "Once Upon a December." It's a dreamily lyrical waltz destined to give Lara's song from Dr. Zhivago some much-needed competition on the music-box front.

Similarly, Anastasia, the first film to come out of 20th Century Fox's new animation studio and the first animated film since Sleeping Beauty to be filmed in Cinemascope, seems destined to challenge the Disney monopoly. It is a gentler, more traditional work in both look and spirit than the most recent Disney delights, but it is not one mote of pixie dust less enchanting for that.