There are LOTS of spoilers in this review. Read only if you want your illusions shattered! When the 1950s film "Anastasia" was made (starring Ingrid Bergman),there was still a lot of doubt as to whether or not the woman who claimed she was the Russian Princess Anastasia was her or a fraud. Some people who knew her swore that this was the princess. Some saw her as a complete charlatan. This controversy alone would make for a good film. However, by the time "Anastasia" was remade as a cartoon in 1997, the real facts of the story were much more clear. Anna was NOT the princess but a sadly deluded Polish lady. Genetic testing showed conclusively that she was NOT the princess--this was without doubt as her DNA did not match living relatives. Yet, oddly, the studio STILL made this film and promoted a lie!! So, while the film is reasonably enjoyable and well made for a non-Disney feature cartoon, it is 100% wrong--and promotes a lie. Speaking as a retired history teacher, I find all this very disturbing....

By the way, after the cartoon debuted, the actual graves of Anastasia's family was found but her remains were not there. BUT, a short time later, her remains were found and there is zero doubt that the princess was killed almost 100 years ago.

The Russian Tsar and his family are cursed by the evil Rasputin. When the revolutionaries break in, Anastasia escapes with her grandmother. However she couldn't hold on as she is left behind at the train station. Ten years later, con men Dimitri and Vladimir are looking for a young girl to pretend to be Anastasia and con the old Dowager out of her reward money. Anya follows a dog to St. Petersburg in an attempt to get to Paris. She stumbles onto Dimitri and Vladimir. She has no childhood memories and was found as a lost 8 year old child.

This is a good effort for Fox Animation and is comparable to contemporary Disney fare. It looks visually beautiful and won't get embarrassed by any comparisons. The voice work is fine but Meg Ryan is a little too old to play the teenager. Hank Azaria needs to be funnier. The songs are very Broadway but none of them are memorable. It's ever so slightly disappointing to not have Meg Ryan sing. It's also tough to basically skip over most of the Russian revolution by making Rasputin an evil wizard who caused everything. It's mostly fine as a reasonable animated family movie.

In the late 1990s, we had two animated movies that were based on a certain event in a country's history. In 1995, Disney gave us an American "history lesson" (and I use that term loosely) with Pocahontas, but in 1997, 20th Century Fox did exactly what Disney did, except give us a look at a bit of Russian history (again, using the term "history" loosely) about the daughter of Czar Nicholas II, Anastasia Romanov, simply called...well...Anastasia. However, one thing to consider when going into this film is that this is a family picture ("kids movie" for short),so if you're looking for a true-to-life history lesson a la a PBS or History Channel documentary, you might as well throw that out the nearest airlock.

In this film, Anastasia, voiced by Meg Ryan, is a princess that went missing for several years after the attack on the Romanov family during a party, which was led by the Romanov's former confidant Rasputin, voiced by Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame, who is an undead, evil sorcerer in this movie. Anastasia, now with a case of amnesia and dubbed Anya, eventually joins two con men, Dimitri (John Cusack) and Vladimir (Fraiser's Kelsey Grammar),who are convinced that she really is the missing Romanov princess, and travel to Paris, France, where her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, resides, to hopefully reunite them, all while Rasputin is seeking her unfortunate demise.

I won't judge this movie on historical accuracy, as all (or most) of us can tell that the general audience for this film is younger children, though adult audiences will also be entertained, since there was a lot of effort put into the creation of this film. That, and I wouldn't dismiss it as a "Disney knockoff" right away, because the directors of the film, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, were former Disney animators, so it's easy to confuse this for a Disney picture like Beauty and the Beast. As a family film alone, it is pretty damn good. The artwork and animation is great, the songs are enjoyable, and the voice acting is pretty decent.

The film was such a success that it became co-director Don Bluth's comeback after a slew of mediocre to bad animated films he directed throughout most of the decade, and his highest grossing film to date. Not only that, but it warranted a direct-to-video follow up film starring the villain's sidekick, Bartok the Bat (voiced by The Simpsons' Hank Azaria in both films).

Overall, the film serves as a great choice to have playing during a family movie night, unless you're extremely picky on historical accuracy, in which case, go do something else for 97 minutes.