Word: anastasia
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...heart of Anastasia, there is a fundamental lack of character development that the movie needs in order not to become a string of disjointed lavish set pieces. Despite its majestic beauty, Anastasia can lapse into a depersonalized spectacle...
Using the demise of imperial Russia as its backdrop, the tale centers around the heroine Anastasia, princess of the Romanov dynasty. During a celebration marking the third centennial anniversary of Romanov rule, the evil sorcerer Rasputin makes an abrupt entrance. He places a curse on the czar's family and with a little bit of fairy dust subsequently incites the Russian revolution (it's a tough pill to swallow). Though her family escapes for Paris (in the all too familiar get-separated-by-fast-moving-train scene), Anastasia is suddenly orphaned...
...film picks up 10 years later, as Anastasia, now 18-year-old "Anya," struggles to find her identity. She eventually runs into Dimitri, a former palace servant-turned-leading man, who is looking for someone to pretend to be the princess so that he can reap a reward from Anastasia's surviving grandmother. Amidst all this, Anastasia must deal with her amnesia (which seems a strange perversion of repressed memory syndrome) and with the pesky Rasputin who rises from Hell in order to destroy the last heir of the Romanovs...
...love story would work just fine standing alone. Meg Ryan does a magnificent job breathing life into Anastasia, giving the starry-eyed princess the touch of quirkiness that she needs to be believable. But there is little character development for the heroine--all her emotions are more asserted than dramatized...
Angela Lansbury, similarly, uses her voice to infuse the dowager, Anastasia's grandmother, with remarkable realism. We feel her pain as each impostor pretending to be Anastasia appears before her--the animation of her facial expressions coalesce with Lansbury's multifaceted voice to provide the most revealing portrayal of character...