All Critics (143)
|
Top Critics (28)
|
Fresh (65)
|
Rotten (81)
|
DVD (33)
I never stopped marveling at the thousands of individually delineated pores and hair strands of the heroine, but the thin story covering her acquisition of one wave after another while narrowly escaping death time and again is strictly for player one.
This bigscreen adaptation of the long-popular interactive computer game is visually impressive if not dramatically cool, and is marked by "acting" that is no worse than that found in the majority of sci-fi films.
The exercise is so elaborately pointless you'd think the Pentagon had bankrolled it.
A mesmerizing technical achievement.
After you're done marveling at the characters' semirealistic way of moving and the freckles and minor imperfections that dot their skin ... it's all too easy to get hung up on the things that make them seem clumsy and awkward.
The only reason to see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is to gaze in amazement at what the future of film may hold. It's not a particularly good movie, but it's a movie that may change the movies.
First computer animated movie to "star" actors.
It's possible that the effect might be different if this were not a soggy, derivative SF movie and we had more to engage and divert us.
Despite the utterly amazing animation and exciting action, this is nothing like its source material and is very disappointing in the end.
It's a paradox--it's at once exhilarating yet exhausting, thrilling yet boring, masterful yet banal.
From a strictly visual standpoint, the film is like nothing you've ever seen. In terms of story, however, you've seen it all before.
The human figure, however, remains a challenge to current CGI technology, since the detailing of hair and freckles, for instance, proves rather more credible than the marionette-like impression created by cold eyes and oddly unconvincing body movements.
The story is well written and incredibly smart, but probably a bit too spiritual for western audiences.
Even in the world of the digitally perfect, a black man seems doomed to be a disposable sidekick, and the heroine must represent every feminist ideal at once.
It's all very complicated and makes one lose interest quickly.
A lot of painstaking work went into this . . . Unfortunately, the main story becomes nearly incomprehensible . . . and the last ten minutes or so just feel like drudgery.
The plot itself is convoluted sci-fi fare, taking in elements of botany, biology and philosophy, but it makes more sense than Pearl Harbor and the cast seems a lot more human.
A delight, rising well above the standard animated action formula.
It looks like a video game intro.
Visually stunning computer-animated sci-fi flick that unfortunately betrays its video-game origins with poor characterisation, an appalling script and a badly thought-out plot.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
