Jodie
Foster and Chow Yun-Fat star in what is essentially a retelling of the The King
and I only without the music.
Jodie
Foster is very engaging as Anna, a widow who finds herself teaching children at
a palace in Siam. Yun-Fat is the king, a passionate man who finds himself falling
for the foreign Anna.
Anna
and the King is harmless enough, and it's also a beauty to look at. It just ran
a bit too long for me. There were also moments when I had a hard time understanding
Yun-Fat's English even though he has a strong screen presence.
Anna
and the King was directed by Andy Tennant who made last year's surprisingly delightful
Ever After. Tennant certainly excels at making a movie look good, but Anna and
the King doesn't run with the greatest of epics, it just falls short. Much of
the film seems processed, and as good as the lead actors are individually, they
lack the spark and the chemistry to make the romance element work.
