Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within, 2001

That said... I have no idea why they called the film Final Fantasy. It should have just been called The Spirits Within.

I'm a big fan of japanese animation. The Wind Ninja Chronicles, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Overfiend, Demon Womb, La Blue Girl, all of those crazy hentai films that are just out of control... there's something incredibly beautiful about them (besides the sex), and they all surpass american animation... most of the time. I thoroughly enjoyed Titan A.E., a number of the Disney films, Transformers: The Movie... stuff like that.

This film... well, while incredible to look at... I was disappointed by a few things.

One. When doing a photo realistic film of people... and you use celebrity voices... try to make the characters look somewhat like the actors the voices are attached to. Even with animatronics, this summer's Cats & Dogs made it seem more personable, with a greater amount of familiarity with the actors involved.

This is greatly apparent with Steve Buscemi's character, Neil. I'm all too familiar with Buscemi's work, and his voice just did not work, coming out of his character. The same can be said for Alec Baldwin's character.

Peri Gilpin is most well known for her role in the television show Frasier, and at the very least, her character fit the classic tough chick role, which almost any woman can pull off. Ming-Na was the voice for Mulan... and many other animated features. By not being able to put a face to these actresses (readily), it made it much easier to accept their roles in the film... which brings me to a certain point. Never use celebrity voices, unless the character takes on that individuals traits. A perfect example would be Titan A.E., as the character resembled the actors.

The Ving Rhames character, while not looking like him, at least had the ethnicity right... which doesn't make it ok, but at least it was familiar. The same goes for James Woods character. Having just seen him in Scary Movie 2, it was hard too visualize him as a young man, in this film.

Donald Sutherland. I was able to accept his role, too, because they had the age down, and it wasn't too difficult to make the leap.

It excells at moments, especially when the team of soldiers is in their body armor, and all you're asked to deal with are human figures in armor, and not looking at their faces, trying to gauge their expressions.

The acting, or the 'voices' I should say, were great. There were some great humor moments, strictly in the dialog, and it propelled the story along well.

But...

This is one of those out of the cracker-jack box stories that are so formulaic, it becomes absurd. The storyline, in and of itself, was quite original, and I enjoyed it thouroughly... but once you got to the motivations of some of the characters, (specifically Woods character, General Hein), you got the feeling that you'd seen it all before... because you had.

The animation in this film is worth the price of admission alone... and I really dig the fact that they keep propelling the technology forward, to make gorgeous films that wouldn't work as live action. Hironobu Sakaguchi is one of the producers, creators and directors of this entire series of films. He's the driving force behind this specific film, and my hat is off to him. I'm always astounded by the quality of work that comes from the japanese. Their dedication to perfection (when it comes to the animation) is astounding, and, at least for the near future, cannot be matched.

Jeff Vintar and Al Reinert both contributed to the story line as well. Their credits don't run very far, and you have to wonder how they got involved in this project to begin with. Reinert worked on Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon... and Vintar worked on some non-mainstream writing gig... it just makes me wonder.

All in all, it's a gorgeous film. DVD File.com has some interesting news for the upcoming DVD, which might include a game for playstation 2 owners.

You can also visit the official site.