Final Fantasy- eh.
140 million bucks to simulate a movie with a lousy script, wooden acting, and pedestrian direction. I'm sure you can get that these days for under 100. With the exception of a few short seguences (maybe ten minutes of the film) I was terribly bored.
Ebert's review: "the reason to see this movie is simply, gloriously, to look at it." That's primarily why I went, but I didn't see much that was glorious. The computer stuff is impressive by the standards of video games, and pretty lousy by the standards of normal animation. The characters are stiff and expressionless and often badly lipsync their dialogue. There is a weightless quality to everything in the film, so that objects that are supposed to be interacting more often just seem superimposed. Everything is just a little bit off, but with no clear intention, so that the end result is not stylistic or comic but merely annoying.
That aside, the visuals are generic and dull. The movie has no style and no inventiveness. For some insane reason they chose to lift the heroes straight out of Armageddon. Given that they had total freedom, did they really need the male "lead" to be a square-jawed GI Joe doll?
(I will grant them that in what must have been an excruciating concession to conscience they decided to give the scientist lady normal breasts and have her wear normal clothes.)
IMO this cutting edge stuff would be better tested out on films that are fundamentally comedies, so that when the animation doesn't quite work we're too busy laughing to complain.
