Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story

⭐5/10

This is the third and final movie in the Kevin Sullivan Anne trilogy, and not one we were particularly excited to watch. This is now fully Anne fan-fic with this story having essentially no bearing in the novels. That's totally understandable because the later Anne novels do not lend themselves to film adaptation, but still, this was a super strange choice. This movie is about WWI breaking out, and Gilbert serving as a doctor, and then Anne going to Europe to... save him? Kinda unclear, and in retrospect I am more realizing that the thrust of the movie was entirely pointless because had she not gone, things would have turned out the same. 

It's all super anti-Green Gables. While LM Montgomery was all about positivity and appreciation of beauty, this is more of a dramatic war epic. It clearly has a vastly increased budget and scope, but I think it is also clear that Sullivan just wanted to make a war movie and had access to the Green Gables name, so why not? 

The problem then is just that the movie isn't all that good. I thought the first half was fine, if not a bit odd. I liked the progression and seeing our favorite Avonlea characters some fifteen years in the future, and I do think it's cool that they got a bunch of the same actors and many of the set pieces. But again, there was really no need to use the Anne IP for this movie. 

But this movie is LONG and really drags. It was technically a miniseries, and was broadcasted over several weeks as television episodes, and so there are strange little mini-arcs within the movie. It kinda felt like a video game where there is a very urgent task at hand, but then Anne slows down to complete some side-quests first. For the record, we watched this over several weeks so it's not like I just got tired of watching for 3.5 hours. 

But my main complaint with this movie is the same complaint I had of the sequel, and that is a super unconvincing love triangle that just felt so strange and contrived and icky. I couldn't believe my ears during the final moments where characters are saying things that seem so incredibly inconsistent. 

There is a nice moment at the end where all of this comes full circle, and it's the one nice use of the IP. It gave me warm fuzzies, but mostly because I was remembering how Green Gables made me feel, essentially drawing from a much better movie/book. But in all, this movie is too long and not good enough to justify the length, and honestly felt like a degradation of the Anne IP rather than a celebration of it.