Product: Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
Rating: 3.0
A bitterly disappointing finale to the story of Anne Shirley
Having listened to Kevin Sullivan's commentary on the DVD versions of the first two "Anne of Green Gables" series, I was forced to conclude that despite the excellence of those productions he really has a very poor conception of L. M. Montgomery's stories. That certainly helps to explain the travesty of "Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story." As co-writer, Sullivan totally abandons Montgomery's Anne books to spin his own overly melodramatic tale of World War I, even though the author's "Rilla of Ingleside" deals with that same time frame. Of course, Anne is almost fifty years old by the time of that novel and it is a pair of her sons who go off to fight in the Great War. Montgomery's novel was published right after the end of World War I, making it a uniquely contemporaneous work which richly deserves a film treatment. Maybe Sullivan objected to the novel's politics, in which the characters supported the war and the Empire, unlike Anne in this film, but who knows. Clearly they waited too long to get around to making this third part, since Anne and Gilbert should have been married long ago. Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie are basically twice as old as the characters they first portrayed in the original "Anne." But while it is great to see these two playing Anne and Gilbert again and there is nothing to fault with either one of their performances, the story told here is just plain awful. There is no reason to tell the tale of a wife who goes looking for her husband in Europe using L. M. Montgomery's characters and if you want to do the struggling writer routine they could have turned to Montgomery's Emily books.The first two "Anne" series were filled with warm and wonderful moments that you enjoy viewing again and again. The only moments that stand out in this sorry affair are when Anne finally finds Gilbert and when she goes back to the train station where Matthew first found Anne so many years ago to give us a sense of having come back to where we started. Of course, a lot of our disappointment comes from the heighten expectation of finally getting to see our beloved characters on screen again. I know I am not the only one who has read everything written by L. M. Montgomery after seeing the first "Anne of Green Gables" program, so I know I am not alone in being bitterly disappointed by this production. Even worse, the storyline here effectively kills ever returning to Montgomery's original stories, unless we are to suddenly believe Anne's kids end up being old enough to fight World War II. Watching this is just such a depressing experience that you have to go back and read again the best parts of Montgomery's novels or watch the first two series again. This is not something Anne's fans will ever treasure, even if they are compelled to check it out. When they see the ruined state of Green Gables, the aptness of the metaphor will be palatable.