I'm sorry to say that the people at Rich Animation really screwed this one up. This movie is based on the Tony winning musical of the same name. Between bad animation and some bad choices with their artistic license, they made something truly terrible.

Anna Leonowens is a schoolteacher from England invited to teach the royal family of Siam (modern day Thailand). When she gets there, she starts trying to change certain traditions that she disagrees with. Meanwhile, the Kralahome (that's the king's adviser) is plotting to become King of Siam and sell the ivory of the sacred white elephants to make himself rich. His plan involves having the British declare Siam a protectorate and placing the Kralahome as the new king.

The movie has made quite a few changes from the original musical. Most of these are understandable, but some of the changes they took too far for my taste. They take out the slavery theme to avoid controversy; that's understandable. They added animal sidekicks and villains; this is also okay, but they went overboard. Three animal sidekicks is too much and I could really have done without Mr. Little. It was decided the movie needed some action, so they created a bunch of horrible CG monsters as well as a scene involving a blimp powered by a panther on a bike?

The animation was just as bad, if not worse. They use computer graphics in the movie and it really sticks out (not in a good way). The CG water during the opening storm wasn't very good. However, the most glaring example of bad CG is the statues that sneak up on the King during "It's a Puzzlement." The movement of the characters was inconsistent. Sometimes, you had fine movement, other times the movement of the characters was unrealistic and jerky. The worse offense here was the Prince during the introductions between Anna and the royal family. What was obviously supposed to be a proud strut was a laughably jerky walk.

Don't watch this movie. If you want an animated movie, choose a different one. Just about any would be better. If you specifically want to see a show based on this story, rent one of the live action adaptations or, better yet, support your local theater and see it live.

Wow. What a lemon... a film that could have been decent but succeeds only in falling on its face.

Many will likely compare this film to the famous 1956 live-action movie of "The King & I" starring Yul Brenner and Deborah Kerr and, although the story follows similar lines in places, I thought it improved on it in others. The film begins with far, far too many cute animals which almost drown out the real story in all their "warming and fuzziness" however things pick up a bit in the latter half with some actual attitude and character from the King and Anna. Also, having a full-fledged villain in the Kralahome--with all the usual villainous motives--heightened the suspense and made the outcome of the film a little less predictable. Events in the film--such as the Prince falling in love with the Burmese servant girl and the English threat to take Siam away from its "barbarian" King--gave motives for the outcomes that resulted. Unfortunately, these are barest sparks of light in a limp story.

The animation was somewhere between unimpressive and pathetic--it took a half decent story and mangled it thoroughly. Colours are bright to the point of being tacky and, for reasons beyond my understanding, the outline width on the animated characters changed from shot to shot. In some scenes, where the characters are shown in a wide shot, the outlining is so thick it obscures their features--perhaps this is a movie that would be improved by watching it on a small screen when such design oddities would be less noticeable. Quality of general character animation is also spotty--in some areas it seems smooth and natural and in others you wonder if the animators had ever seen a human being move before. When Prince Chulalongkorn enters at the presentation of the royal children, the impression is suppose to be of the strong, proud crown prince--see "King & I" live-action film for what it should look like--but when he stomps in he looks like a robot with broken hips. Also, the computer animation was very poorly integrated into the rest of the movie. The computer-generated ship looks like something that should be floating in a bathtub and the battle between the "bulging-off-the-screen" computer-generated demons and the King's "flat-as-a-pancake" panther was so sad it was almost laughable. I do, however, give points to the designers for taking the time to make the environment look predominantly Siamese (Thai)--except for the occasional Chinese dragon and Japanese garden.