The voice talent are all big name celebrities: Meg Ryan is "Anya," John Cusack is "Dimitri," Kelsey Grammar is "Vladimir," Christopher Lloyd is "Rasputin," Angela Lansbury is "Marie," Bernadette Peters is "Sophie," and Hank Azaria (the man of a thousand voices) is "Bartok." That combined with the high level animation must've made for a VERY expensive animated film. A risky move from Fox, but I think it'll pay off.
Walt Disney animation is gonna have to figure out what to do if they still wanna rule animation, and I don't mean by their dirty tricks. They need to take their time and really work on a movie rather than crank them out like in an assembly line. Dreamworks SKG will be releasing THEIR first animated film soon ("The Prince of Egypt"), and I'm sure that Disney is gonna feel the heat from THAT one!
My congratulations
to Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, the directors of the film. They went out
of their way to make a really good animated film and succeeded. My only
real complaints about the movie are that the story had no surprises to speak
of, and younger children may not know what the hell is going on. Also, a
couple of the music numbers seemed right out of one of the Disney films.
Can you find the "Topsy-Turvy" rip-off? Still, I was pleasantly surprised
by this film, and I hope that this will be a wake up call to Disney's animation
department.