We're on Netflix again today, my account, and the popular selections give us today's animated feature film...
S'kind of funny. Last week we opened up by looking at a movie produced by Richard Rich, a disgraced Disney animator who's spent the rest of his feature film direction and production career endeavoring to prove to his old bosses that he could do just as well without them. And this week, we're opening up with a film by Don Bluth, a disgraced Disney animator who oh wait.
The thing is, Don Bluth seems to have had a fair deal more success than Rich did. After leaving Disney in the early 80s due to distaste with the company's current direction, he founded his own animation company and started making movies the way he thought they should be. His early forays with his personal production company - notably The Secret of NIMH, An American Tale, and The Land Before Time, all of which achieved critical acclaim and are still touted as some of the best animated films, Disney or otherwise - and for a time seemed like a legitimate rival to the most famous animation company on the planet. However, success for those who try to take on the House the Mouse Built usually doesn't last that long, and the early 90s weren't all that kind to Bluth. His studio folded, his work with other companies failed to achieve success, and, probably most damning of all, all of his good films recieved crappy sequel after crappy sequel on DVD. Not exactly his proudest hour.
Fortunately, Bluth was given another chance through 20th Century Fox, looking for a way to break into the animation scene and give Disney a run for their money in the same way the director had in the 80s. So it was that Bluth partnered up with the burgeoning Fox Animation Studios to produced 1997's Anastasia. The film was a reasonable success (140 million worldwide) and again it seemed for a while that Don Bluth would have a chance at squaring off against his old employers and potentially winning, especially given the state of Disney animation at the time. Then they made a shitty direct to video sequel to the movie, Titan AE failed to recoup its budget, Fox Animation Studios folded, and Don Bluth never made a movie again.
So things go sometimes.
Although Bluth's 90s work isn't exactly fondly remembered, Anastasia seems well enough liked. I rarely see too many bad words spared for it online, and the film often finds itself on "remember how great the 90s were?" lists, so maybe it's good. Maybe not. Who knows. I do, seeing as I've seen the movie and I'm here to give you my opinion on it. So opinion away with us.
The film's plot is basically revisionist history in order to get the kids in the audience involved. It involves the Russian Communist Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs ACTUALLY being the result of an evil, reimagined as a wizard version of Rasputin just really, REALLY hating the royal family. So all that stuff about a dissatisfied lower class and the rise of a communist system? Didn't happen, evil wizard made everyone mad. Anyways, in this alternate history, the young Anastasia is separated from her grandmother by the chaos of the revolution, and grows up in an orphanage, yearning to learn of her real past and identity. Fortunately, as she's striking out, a young former servant boy, Dimitri, and his older former nobleman assistant, Vladimir, are searching for the real Anastasia to present to the older woman in order to claim the reward. They get together, coalesce a plan, and strike out for Paris, all while under attack from the now-dead Rasputin, attempting to make sure the last of the Romanovs really IS dead.
First off, I really have to criticize the film for the whole evil wizard thing. Christopher Lloyd does well enough as Rasputin, but he seems far too out of place. The main conflict is strong enough without needing to say "a wizard did it," and Don Bluth's tendency towards dealing with darker subject material makes it seem really odd to me that he'd shy away from the realities of the Revolution for the kids. Most of the historical violence is confined to the prologue anyways, so all the explanation does is weigh us down with scenes where evil green energy bats cause havoc every now and then, before a rather unsatisfying and unnecessary final battle at the end. Maybe it was the studio imposing it on him in order to be more Disneyesque, but it just doesn't gel with the rest of the film.
The rest of the plot, though, isn't all that much better. I can't say it's BAD by any measure, but it definitely is sort of cliched. Anastasia fits the mold of the stereotypical 90s Disney princess far better than any of the actual princesses they pumped out during the decade - yearning for a new life, generally pretty, snarky in danger, helpless around the main bad guy, etcetera etcetera. Dmitri and Vlad don't fall into the trap on their own too badly, but the romance subplot between Dmitri and Anastasia ticks off all the "no, no, see, DISNEY has romance subplots in their films, so..." boxes, which doesn't do the film any favors. There is SOME interesting stuff when they're teaching her how to be the Grand Duchess, but beyond that there's not much here you haven't seen before. Still competently executed (unlike some overly cliched films featured here...), but nothing special.
Fortunately, I don't have to bitch and moan for too terribly long, because there are elements to the film that I like. The music, for example, is a pretty solid effort. None of it is as instantly memorable as anything Disney pumps out (they were clearly trying to be like Disney in this movie, so yes I do think all the Disney comparisons are apt), but that's like saying the wire-fu isn't all that great because the Matrix did it better. Some of the tunes, like Once Upon a December and In the Dark of the Night, are definitely catchy enough to warrant having around, and the big show-stopping crowd songs (Rumor in St Petersburg and Paris Holds the Key) seem like they'd work really well with a few more go-arounds. I can't say it's a favorite soundtrack of mine, especially since it falls into the usual animated musical traps of not actually functioning as a musical - if the songs aren't the primary insight into the characters and plot points, why are we making a musical at all? - but it's solid enough.
The animation works out pretty well too. There are some elements I find distasteful, especially the way the leads' faces constantly look like they're scrunched up for no reasons, but the characters are designed well and move in a way that looks good to someone like me who has absolutely no formal education in the art form. Unlike Alpha and Omega, there aren't any moments where I'm taken out of the film by ugly characters or poorly composed shots - in fact, there's some really neat animated camera work in places. The scenes on the boat where they have what looks like a computer generated set rocking back and forth with the ocean, and this one shot where they swing around the front of a car both struck me as being really good. Even if the studio folded due to a lack of financial success, you can't say they didn't know what they were doing.
It's a pretty alright film, all things considered. I can't really say it washes over you like I have with other films I've used that phrase on. Some bits might even count as really memorable to certain people. But I just can't get past the revisionism at the start that saddles the movie with a pointless bad guy. The drive to be like Disney is understandable, but most non-Disney animated films that found long lasting success did their best to not be like Disney, Bluth's included. It feels like the studio saw their competitor floundering after the release of Pocahontas, and brought in the first guy they could to slap together all the traditional Disney elements into one movie in order to take advantage of an incoming vacuum. As such, they needed a villain, because all the Disney films have an obvious villain, and we wound up with Rasputin bouncing around set every few scenes.
Gad, I hope this wasn't the result of studio interference. A little reigning in is fine once in a while, but creators really need the room to breathe. I'm guilty of liking stuff that winds up the way it is because of corporate mandate (cough Marvel Studios cough), but I really do think that a studio stepping in and telling the director what to do in order to increase profits is more likely to ruin a film than enhance it. Short-term profits are important, sure (filmmaking is a business, after all), but there needs to be SOME consideration to whether or not the choices made will result in a good movie.
Personal digressions about creative freedom in the art world aside, I think I can recommend Anastasia. It's not really to my personal tastes, but I can definitely see the appeal. If you haven't seen it before, I think there's a solid chance you'll like it. And if you have, then it's on Netflix and that's always a good place for revisiting childhood favorites. I was surfing around earlier and saw they had Zathura, which I'm totally gonna watch later this week, so I feel you completely if that's what you wanna do.
(Assorted thoughts:
- So as a kid I had this toy that we got from Burger King or someplace of Batrok, the little white bat thing, and he had an eye clutched in his arms and legs, and you could pull it out and watch it slowly reel back into his grip. It was a neat toy, and I never knew why he had an eye until I saw the movie today. Turns out, there's a five second scene where they're playing with the fact that Rasputin's a walking corpse, and Batrok accidentally pulls his eye out of his head. Bit of a morbid thing to base a Big Kid's Meal toy on, but if I'm gonna criticize the movie for not being grim enough for its creative team's reputation, then I suppose it's a good toy by that measure.
- I don't think Rasputin works as part of the movie as a whole, but the whole thing about him being a magical, falling apart corpse is pretty neat, and leads to some fun moments with body parts winding up in places they don't belong.
- I honestly don't understand why Batrok winds up with a lady bat at the end of the movie.
- There's this bit when they get to Paris where Anastasia just goes "SHOPPING! IN PARIS!" and over dramatically swoons, and... look, it was the 90s, the world was still working on the whole "not all women are exactly the same person with different sized tits" thing. We still are, but I'd like to think we've gotten better.
- Someone on the soundtrack for the movie is credited with "finger snapping." I don't know why that interests me, but it does.
- The Incredible Hulk's early companion Rick Jones did voice work for this movie.
- Swiping directly from Wikipedia here: "Some of Anastasia's contemporary relatives also felt that the film was distasteful, but most Romanovs have come to accept the "repeated exploitation of Anastasia's romantic tale ... with equanimity."" Imagine having to be these people and constantly have your legacy exploited because the version everyone's familiar with makes them feel better. Imagine how fucking awful that must feel.
- Today I learned that Fox Animation Studios was based out of Phoenix. I don't normally take part in any kind of state pride thing, but Arizona represent.
- Best part of the movie: Rasputin delivering the usual "NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU NOW!" line before Dmitri comes out of nowhere, goes "WANNA BET?" and decks him in the face. It's completely ridiculous, and me and my roommates played it over like four times before getting back to the rest of the movie.)
Apologies for the lateness of the review. I had some family stuff to take care of over the weekend, and got hit with a pretty bad bout of depression and bad luck on Sunday. I'll try to make Wednesday's come a little earlier, but I don't have a holiday to fall back on this time, and tomorrow's open mic night, so I'm not gonna make any promises or anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment