Product: Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
Rating: 3.0
mixed emotions
The first two movies in the Anne of Green Gables saga were richly engaging. With this installment, however, something seems to be missing. While it's really good to see the old familiar places and people its a little tough at first to settle into the flow of this story.We've departed from Lucy Montgomery's novels and gone off into a fabricated new adventure patched together by the director. We've jumped twenty years in time, which is a bit much. We're supposed to believe that this story is taking place when Anne and Gill are in their late twenties or early thirties. It's hard to reconcile this with the time period in which the first movies took place. We've fast forwarded to World War I, but none of the characters have quite aged properly it seems. In the books Anne's children are involved in the war, not Anne herself. The director uses clips from the old movies to tie them into this one, and we're supposed to think they happened twenty years later than they did. Dates aside the movie is visually interesting to look at. The costumes and sets are stunning. This at least keeps things interesting as the story deteriorates on multiple levels.The first half of the movie opens with Anne returning to Avonlea to a wealthy Diana and rundown Green Gables. She and Gil have been engaged for at least ten years or more which would have been bizarre then. All the actors seem to effectively recapture their characters and we can accept them as the people we know from the other movies. Avonlea is changed though and the charm and humor of the first movies, and even the Avonlea television series is virtually gone.Anne and Gil soon move to New York together so Gil can pursue his career as a surgeon. Anne works as an editor for a publishing house, all the while writing a novel of her own. We see a few predictable events, Anne's work is stolen, and Gil is asked to compromise his integrity in order to gain prestige. Disillusioned and dejected, they return to Avonlea to renew a life together. Soon Gil goes off to war, he disappears and Anne goes off to find him.The story moves at a choppy pace with the resolution of some conflicts being glossed over a little too quickly. For instance, in New York Anne collaborates on a novel called 'Kindred Spirits' with Jack Garrison, the golden boy of the publishing house where she works. The idea is that his name will make her famous and her talent will revive his dying career. Predictably Anne gets no credit for her work and drama ensues. A few scenes later, we see Anne working at her desk and we see a stack of books bearing the title 'Kindred Spirits by Anne Shirley'. We are left to assume that everything eventually worked itself out. This is kind of anti-climactic as it was such a major plot point in the first part of the movie.The final twenty minutes of the movie feel the same way. Anne and Gil are trying to find a missing child Anne promised to care for. This in and of itself could have made for an hour's worth of story telling but it is condensed to a few rushed scenes that feel anything but natural. Suddenly everything is resolved and the movie is over. Perhaps the script was originally much longer and had to chopped to fit time constraints.Overall the movie tries to get off to a good start but falls apart towards the end as too many different plot threads are wrapped up in a small space of time and some not at all. It all feels like it ends too soon. Still, it's good to see old characters and places, even if they dont seem to quite fit. It's nice to finally see that Gil and Anne do get married and there seems to be some closure to the saga. What would have been wonderful would have been to pick up the story as Lucy Montgomery told it, and followed it through World War I from there.