Review of Bartok The Magnificent

Introduction

Twentieth Century Fox occasionally produce feature length cartoons for their international audience. Bartok is a character that appeared in their successful version of `Anastasia` made in 1997. This 1999 movie moves Bartok the albino bat, previously sidekick to Rasputin, to an earlier period of Russian history.
He has a wacky sidekick, Zosie and has a Royal Fan-the young Ivan who will one day be Tsar.

When Ivan is kidnapped Bartok is given the task of going to find him in the Iron Forest of the evil witch, Baba Yaga.
Don Bluth directs, also responsible for An American Tail and Titan A.E.
Voices featured include our own Tim Curry.

Video

A reasonable transfer and clear enough picture but despite being fairly recent it ain`t Pixarfolks and we seem to have much higher requirements for animation these days-and why not?

Audio

The cast sounded promising with Hank Azaria who provides the voices of Apu and Moe in The Simpsons.
Kelsey Grammar who provided a memorable Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2 has very little to work with here.
The script, plot and songs are best forgotten.

Features

No, why did you expect something?

Conclusion

Ooh Ivan-that`s Terrible!

I don`t think anyone actually said that but they should have. It`s pretty awful, an attempt to cash in on the success of `Anastasia`. Please do not insult your children by making them watch this no matter how desperate you are.
The songs are dire the dialogue is dismal and it never had a plot.