Anastasia (1997)

There's a moment in Anastasia where the film almost convinces you it's something genuinely special. The animation is sweeping, the song is soaring, the colours are sumptuous, and you think: yes, this is it. Then it passes, and you're back to something you've more or less seen before. That's the experience of watching this Fox animated musical in a nutshell. It's charming, it's handsome, it's consistently enjoyable, and it stops just short of being great.

Let's get one thing straight first: this is not a Disney film. It gets lumped in with the Disney Renaissance constantly, and I understand why, but Anastasia is a Fox production, and there's a slightly different flavour to it. A little more European in its visual sensibility, a little more willing to sit with melancholy. The art deco touches throughout are gorgeous, and the animation is fluid and expressive in a way that clearly had real craft and real money behind it. Some of the dreamlike sequences are genuinely beautiful. This is not a film that skimped on ambition.

The voice cast does a lot of the heavy lifting in making it work. Meg Ryan brings genuine warmth and a pleasing scrappiness to Anya, the young amnesiac orphan who may or may not be the lost Russian grand duchess. John Cusack is grounded and likeable as Dimitri, the rogue with the inevitable heart of gold, and their back-and-forth crackles with enough energy to keep you invested. Then there's Christopher Lloyd as Rasputin, absolutely gnawing through the scenery with tremendous relish, complete with a delightfully unsettling bat for company. He's enormous fun. The songs, too, are catchy and emotionally well-placed. A few of them genuinely land.

But here's my honest problem with Anastasia: it plays it extremely safe. The plot is a textbook underdog-to-princess arc, hitting every expected beat on cue. The history is, to put it very gently, romanticised to the point of fantasy, which is fine in principle, but the film doesn't quite earn the emotional resonance it's clearly reaching for. And despite a supernatural villain with genuine menace on paper, the stakes never feel truly dangerous. You're never worried. You're just pleasantly along for the ride.

Compare that to something like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I think takes far bigger swings in terms of darkness and thematic weight. That film has edges that genuinely cut. Anastasia files its edges down, and the result is something more polished but less memorable. It's more style than substance, more spectacle than soul, and you feel that slight hollowness most in the third act, when the film reaches for a grand emotional payoff it hasn't quite built the foundations for.

None of which is to say it's bad. Not even close. It's a lovely watch. Warm, well-crafted, and easy to love on a Sunday afternoon with a blanket and a cup of tea. The nostalgia factor is real for anyone who grew up with it, and revisiting it as an adult, I can see why it lodged itself in so many people's memories. The good things here are genuinely good.

Three stars. Anastasia is comfort viewing at its most confident, a film with strong vocals, beautiful images, and its heart absolutely in the right place. Just don't go in expecting it to challenge you, or to linger long after the final note fades. It's good. Nearly very good, even. But it's not a classic, and I think somewhere beneath all that gorgeous animation, it knows it.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1997  | Watched: 2026-04-29

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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