Product: Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
Rating: 1.0
Actually 1.5 stars
I'd second most of what's been said in the other reviews here--that it's nothing like the books and hasn't much of the magic of the first two movies. Actually it's outright depressing. And, it's a betrayal of LM Montgomery's books--it's kind of like seeing all the actors from the previous two movies playing different characters in a movie unrelated to anything she wrote. It's kind of surreal and puzzling, not to mention BORING. There's no sense to the plot--what the heck was the point of writing in as part of the screenplay Anne going to New York? That entire section seemed totally irrelevant. If Kevin Sullivan was going to depart from the books so completely, he might have tried to write something with at least a little internal coherence instead of a series of lackluster scenes without any overlying themes.Since the characters are all 13 years older than in the movie before, there are some inevitable changes. One of these that I can't get over is Anne's voice, which is much deeper. She hardly smiles at all in this movie and it's no wonder because it's dang depressing the whole way through, with this dark overtone as in any war movie.The extra half star over one that I'd like to give this are for the acting, which is pretty decent; Megan Follows particularly I think has improved as an actress. Also Anne's hair isn't ridiculously and artificially bouffant like in the 2nd movie; it's just the right size and color. Gilbert Blythe is much cuter in this movie than in the other two (the first one he had this strange perm, the second he still had baby fat on his face), and his chemistry with Anne is much more believable here too--in the second movie they seemed so asexual, whereas here their passion for each other is evident and I can actually imagine that they'd have enough sex to produce the huge brood Anne does in the books.All in all a disappointment and also a movie that, because of how it strays so completely from the timeline of the books, makes it near impossible to make another sequel based on Rilla of Ingleside or other stories of Anne's children.