Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

     Okay, let me start this off by saying that I am a huge ff fan...or, at least I was one. Some of the happiest days of my life were spent with final fantasies 4, 5, 6, 7, and tactics.  After 7, I think the series has gone to shit, and this movie is further proof of this.  I HATED this movie.  Every second of it that I saw gave me even more reason to hate it.  This was by far the worst movie that I have seen all year (and I've seen some pretty bad movies this year).  Also, this movie had almost NOTHING to do with Final Fantasy.  The whole thing is just a lame way to cash in on the Final Fantasy name and to make a quick buck.   Normally this wouldn't bother me too much...if the movie was any good.  The problem is, it isn't.  I'll get to that later though...

     I'll start off with a bit of praise, so I don't sound biased for the rest of this review.  The animation was incredible.  Visually, this movie is beautiful.  Some of the most incredible artwork I've ever seen in a movie.  Most of the things you will see in this movie are breathtaking.  The landscapes, the monsters, the machines, the ships all look as real as they possibly can.  The people look almost like they could be real actors...but that's where the problems start.  They look like actors...but not GOOD actors.  I would rank the acting in this movie as some of the cheesiest I have ever seen (and this includes movies like evil dead and jack frost which are SUPPOSED to be cheesy).  Every scene that could have been full of strong emotion was completely ruined by this horrible "acting."  Not one scene in this movie is the least bit believable.  When characters died, I really did not care (in some cases, I was quite happy they did). 

     The whole movie is full of action movie cliches, cheesy one-liners, and various other insults to your intelligence.  Watching it, you are prone to wonder, "who exactly is this movie aimed at?"  Obviously it isn't for little kids, it's violent with some mature themes (it earned itself a pg-13 rating), but anyone old enough to see the movie is probably too old to be able to actually enjoy it.  I found it hard to concentrate on the movie, mainly because i was too pre-occupied noticing all the poor directing choices, saying to myself "i see what they're TRYING to do here, but if they did it this way, or they didn't do this, it would have worked out so much better."  I was also distracted quite often by how mis-matched some of the voices are.  A lot of them simply DO NOT fit the characters at all.  My least favorite character was "Neil" ironically voiced by Steve Buscemi, one of my favorite actors.  Every time I heard his voice, I expected to see Steve Buscemi's pointy little face, or at least something slightly resembling it.  instead I got a fairly attractive man with a square jaw and a pretty good build - standard super hero material.  Now, I don't know if it's just because I so closely associate that voice with his face from all the movies I watch of his, or if it actually does not go with his face, but that really doesn't matter.  If you want a character to be believable to EVERYONE who sees the movie, don't use such a familiar voice for your character (or at least make the character somewhat resemble the real actor).  This applies to many of the other characters as well (there are however a few good fits - the dykey girl, sid).

     The plot is horrible.  The whole thing makes very little sense at all.  50% of the time, you will have no idea what the hell is going on on screen, why things are blowing up, why people are being attacked, what the hell the main conflict is about to begin with.  You have two villains with absolutely no motivation at all: the phantoms, and General Hein.  You have a group of heroes who most of the time you couldn't care less about, and the rest of the time you hate more than the villains.  I think their goal of finding the 8 spirits is supposed to be the main part of the plot, but you never really understand why they want them, or what exactly will happen when they find them.  In addition, when the movie starts, they ALREADY HAVE 5 of the 8 spirits, and the sixth is obtained in the second scene of the movie, so this plot does not have much room to advance.  There is also the "conflict" between the phantoms and the people, and the "persecution" of the main characters, but they make just about as much sense as the spirit thing.  There is virtually no character development at all.  Not one scene in this movie is the least bit dramatic.  Some of the scenes are obviously meant to be very emotional, but the only emotion I felt throughout this entire movie was hysterical laughter.  I couldn't believe that so much work went into such a cliche piece of crap. 

     If this movie was made with real people, I would give it a 2/10.  Since it's all animated, and the animation is very well done, I'll give it a 5/10.  I don't reccomend this to anyone over 13, or with any taste in movies whatsoever.

Rated PG-13, 105 minutes (although it seemed to go on forever - couldn't wait for it to end)

~Kwalka