Since
Anastasia
is animator
Don Bluth
's attempt at a sweeping epic along the lines of
Disney
's
Beauty and the Beast
or
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
, it's not surprising that its score duplicates the
formula of balancing big
show tunes
from the film with re-recorded MOR
pop
versions of the same song. In this case, it's
Aaliyah
singing
"Journey to the Past,"
and
Deana Carter
's cover of
"Once Upon a December,"
and the
Donna Lewis
Richard Marx
duet on
"At the Beginning"
-- fine versions of fine songs that sound better in their original incarnation (also included on the disc). Fortunately, the bulk of the album is comprised of selections from the
soundtrack
.
Lynn Ahrens
Stephen Flaherty
have written the songs for
, and their work is generally quite good; occasionally the lyrics are silly (
"Rumor in St. Petersburg"
), but perhaps that should be expected, given the difficulty of making the story of Anastasia into an animated
musical
. On the whole,
might not live up to the high standards that
The Little Mermaid
set, but it's as good as
Pocahontas
, and that's not bad company at all. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine