Anastasia

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Director: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

Stars: Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Lloyd

Year: 1997 Running Time: 94 mins Rating:

Animated musical adventure featuring the voices of Meg Ryan, John Cusack and Kelsey Grammer. An amnesiac 18-year-old Russian orphan does not realise that she is actually the youngest daughter of the murdered Tsar.

Review

Charming for kids, less so for adults - as the historical facts are treated with particular contempt - this is a colourful musical cartoon tale of a girl who finds love, untold wealth and her real family.

The story begins in early 20th-century Russia when evil sorcerer Rasputin (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) curses the Russian royal family.

Ten years later, 18-year-old Anya (Meg Ryan) is released from The People's Orphanage; con-man Dimitri (John Cusack) persuades her that she may be the long-lost Romanov princess, Anastasia.

Together with Dimitri's pal Vladimir (Frasier's Kelsey Grammar) and a cute dog, they head for Paris to find Anastasia's grandmother (Angela Lansbury) - but in their wake fumes Rasputin...

The rest, as they say, is history - or, in this case, not.