'Anastasia': The Royal Treatment

"Anastasia," the latest animated feature from Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, is a triumph of survivability and sampling. If you can’t beat the paw-stepping momentum of the Mickey Uber Alles entertainment machine, then imitate, imitate, imitate! Bluth and Goldman, graduates of Walt Disney’s military industrial complex (where they shaped such films as "Pete’s Dragon" and "The Rescuers"), have fashioned their picture to look just enough like Disney without incurring a lawsuit. They’ve also infused the movie with enough of their own creativity to claim authorship.

The story starts in St. Petersburg in 1916. Little Anastasia, daughter of Czar Nicholas, and her family are trapped in the palace, when the evil Rasputin and his dark forces storm the building. Thanks to the assistance of Dimitri, a young kitchen boy, the Dowager Empress Marie (voice of Angela Lansbury) and Anastasia escape through a secret tunnel and make a run for the train station. As Rasputin pursues them, he falls through a crack in the frozen Volga and sinks to his death. But he remains a force to contend with; he has sold his soul (which he keeps in a vial, along with green, satanic minions) in exchange for the power to curse the Romanov family. Marie loses contact with Anastasia at the station and retreats to Paris. Anastasia remains in Russia.

Cut to St. Petersburg a few years later. Dimitri (the voice of John Cusack), now older, and Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer), a former aristocrat of the old days, are pulling off a royal scam. Hoping to find someone who resembles Anastasia, they intend to take the human facsimile to Paris, then make off with the generous reward that the dowager empress has promised for her discovery.

When they bump into a woman named Anya (the real Anastasia, who remembers nothing of her imperial family beginnings), they figure they’re on to something. Little do they know, until later, that this fake princess (voiced by Meg Ryan) is the real McCoy -- or is that Mc-czarevna? As they head to Paris, the dead Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd), who is having trouble with his body parts (they keep falling off), chases them, with a wisecracking albino bat called Bartok (Hank Azaria) in aerial tow.

"Anastasia" isn’t going to make history -- in fact, its retelling of the czarist demise is clearly anything but history. Despite claims from a procession of Anastasia pretenders, the entire family perished at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1918, according to the Russian government. The movie’s songs, composed by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are hardly the bouncy, sing-along standard of even Walt Disney’s lower offerings. But the movie’s infinitely more enjoyable than Disney’s sleazily commercial "Hercules." Rasputin’s advancing body decay and Bartok’s accented (from what culture I’m not even sure) quips will amuse older viewers.

Bluth’s visual style, which has begun to use computer-generated imagery like his bigger competition, is a step up from his uneven work in such films as "An American Tail," "The Land Before Time," "All Dogs Go to Heaven" and "Rock-a-Doodle." His human figures have become graceful and fluid. There are also impressive, big-scale scenes, such as a train derailment from a snow-covered bridge. And the vocal performances of Ryan and Cusack give us a real sense of romance and the kind of cute, screwballish bickering we’ve been led to expect from, well, Disney.

ANASTASIA (G) — Contains nothing objectionable, although the scary invasion of the palace, the train crash and Rasputin’s deterioration may alarm some children.