Anna

Follow-up movie, hitting theatres exactly one year after the sensationally successful and FRG-pop culture national-TV-X-mas-six-parter! Do not watch if you haven't seen the series, nor, if you never liked it, but be aware, if you lived then, you are a minority. The movie doesn't even live up to the series in terms of story telling though, and at times is plain silly, the costuming/fashion too over the top, the music featured was hardly pop, the classic dancing does stand the test of time in my amateur opinion though, and the entire movie is as targeted for a base audience as it gets. The fact that the two major characters are finally allowed to become innocently intimate (their relationship spans about a decade at that point), is equally mandatory to make sense of the admission money, and bold, as disability was by far not as "normal" to a general audience as it is today - the awkward discussion Anna's parents are having about it, accurately reflects on that. Health, fitness, strength, discipline, mental toughness, ambition, stamina, diligence, bearing up, zeal, thinking big, competition, and not least, virtue, these are core late 80s W-German values! Tragically and sadly ironic, the actress who actually became "Anna", struggled with a multitude of personal problems, eventually succumbing to her demons.

This film is the theatrical follow-up to a very popular German TV-series (also called "Anna"), about a young girl who wants to make it as a prima ballerina. The plot is pretty predictable (and comparable to many other a dancing-film), but that doesn't really matter, since the dancing and the charm of the main leads (especially non-professional actress Silvia Seidel as Anna) save the day. A worthy sequel to the even better TV-series. Witty and charming. 7/10