Anastasia

Anastasia

It would seem rather doubtful that an animated musical inspired by the legend of Anastasia could ever get off the ground, but “Anastasia” is a clever chooser. It skipped through and past the Russian Revolution with such haste as to be called selective amnesia, leaving behind only ravings babbled in monasteries, goblins turning green in their sleep, shipwrecks and young love. This makes for an enjoyable picture at times exciting and a promising debut for Fox’s new animation studio, which has declared war on Disney.

Loosely based on the same speculative tale as the 1956 Ingrid Bergman feature film, which was about an impostor who claimed to be Anastasia but failed several tests designed to separate her from true believers (who have included some members of the Romanov family), this movie assumes that one child did survive the massacre of Russia’s ruling Romanovs and grow up to assert a legitimate right to the throne. That would be Anastasia (voice by Meg Ryan), whose grandmother was Empress Marie (Angela Lansbury). The dowager escaped to Paris, where she wearily dismisses one phony after another.

We first see Anastasia as a girl wrapped in her loving family; then disaster strikes and she spends years in a cruel orphanage, losing all memory of her earlier life. Now she is a lithe and lively teenager who gets into trouble with two con men named Dimitri (John Cusack) and Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer), both former royal retainers with inside knowledge. They plan to coach an impostor until she can fool the dowager empress: The joke is that this impostor really is Anastasia.

That’s basically it for plot; what else can you do with these historical figures? The important thing is how you tell it, and “Anastasia” sticks closely enough to formula while finding enough variation to be interesting. There is, of course, the obligatory sidekick for both hero and heroine: Pooka, Anastasia’s faithful little dog. The villain (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) has little minions who do his dirty work; there are songs but not too many, so as to avoid soppy romance.

What really counts is how good the villain is, and Rasputin is a great one maybe the best such character in animation since Ursula in “The Little Mermaid.” In life he was hard to kill because he took forever to die; in this movie he hovers eternally between heaven and hellfire. His spirit lives on, but body parts keep dropping off. His little sidekick Bartok, an albino bat voiced by Hank Azaria, tirelessly screws them back on.

There’s also a friend for Anastasia: Sophie (Bernadette Peters), the dowager’s lady in waiting. Every major character gets a sidekick; Dimitri has Vladimir, and the dowager empress has Sophie. By the end of the film Dimitri will win Anastasia, Vladimir will win Sophie and we will be grateful that there was no wedding between Bartok and Pooka.

The film was produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (“The Land Before Time,” “An American Tail”), former Disney artists who consciously include three key ingredients from big Disney hits: action, romance and music. Only the songs aren’t quite up to snuff; why didn’t they just license “Anastasia”? This album omits it altogether.

There are three big action sequences: A storm at sea during which Anastasia sleepwalks perilously close to Davy Jones’ locker; a runaway locomotive and wreck as Rasputin’s goblins turn green in their sabotage of Anastasia’s train to Paris, and a final showdown between Rasputin and the forces of good. The action is lively and energetic, especially the train scene which is genuinely thrilling.

But most of all, I was won over by the story: It’s so well constructed that even little kids will be able to follow along with Anastasia’s plight and dreams. (“I’m not exactly Grand Duchess material,” she says. “A skinny little nobody with no past and no future.”) The movie gains a couple of satisfying twists out of the concept of making Anastasia an imposter who isn’t an imposter.

And the Dowager Empress voiced by Angela Lansbury, who brings a lot of weariness to the character gives us real pathos: How many more fakes does she have to put up with? Animation is the road less traveled for movies; it offers complete control over space, time and gravity, but it’s so tricky and labor intensive that animated features are rare (and Disney excels at them like nobody else). “Anastasia” has another team on the field.

Watch Anastasia For Free On Gomovies.