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Anna and The King
Release Date: 17 December 1999
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Certificate: 12
Starring: Jodie Foster, Yun-Fat Chow, Ling Bai, Tom Felton
Director: Andy Tennant
Running Time: 148 mins
Take one musical, remove the musical bit, adapt, release for general consumption.
Such seems to be the thinking behind Fox's Anna and the King, a lavish remake of the Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr classic. A tough act to follow then...

Jodie Foster ('Nell', 'Contact') plays the Eponymous Anna, an English schoolteacher, who has been widowed and left with a son to raise, who travels to exotic Siam in search of edventure. She finds it in the court of King Mongkut (Chow Yun Fat - normally seen kicking, punching or shooting people in various Hong Kong thrillers) wher she is empolyed as teacher to the king's 58 children. Anna and the King start out as opposing forces, he believing that she is a British imperialist, and she thinking him a heathen, but opposites attract and by the end of the film they find themselves drawn to each other in a romance that cannot have a future.
Director Andy Tennant ('Ever After') films the picture in grandiose style highly reminiscent of his hero David Lean, and sticks fairly closely to the previous films story.

Jodie Foster is excellent as Anna (although her clipped English accent slips a bit at times). But it is Chow Yun Fat who shines as the monarch of a proud and exotic land far from western ethics.

Overall the film works well and both fans of the prevoius movies and newcomers to the tale will not be dissapointed.
By Clayton Everett