Search - Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (Single Disc Edition) on DVD

Very Different--A Little Creepy--But Pretty Good

Dellin Canfield (dellincanfield@hot | Boulder, CO. | 07/18/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This movie represents a breakthrough in computer graphics. For the first time computer artists have created images that are nearly photo real for an entire motion picture. The question is, of course, whether what is essentially a cartoon can hold the interests and provoke the emotions of an adult audience, the answer (proved indesputably by Final Fantasy) is that it can. Final Fantasy is essentially a science fiction/horror/spiritual journey of a film that, surprisingly, doesn't get bogged down by all the themes it attempts to engage. Its closest relative would be something like Aliens, although Final Fantasy is not nearly as terrifying. Still, there are some scenes that would disturb young children. The film takes place during a war for supremacy of the Earth that has presumably been going on for quite some time. Most of the major cities are in ruins and what is left of humanity can be found collected in the hearts of once proud urban areas under glowing orange "safety shields." These shields are designed to protect the humans from invisible "phantoms" that need only to touch a person to rip away his/her lifeforce (this is done numerous times with spectacular visual effects that never get old). The hope of humanity rests upon the shoulders of one woman and her mentor (a wise old scientist who looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi--the old one--and is voiced to perfection by Donald Sutherland). In opposition to the military leaders of the planet, our two heroes seek to understand the "phantoms" in terms of their mythical link to the legendary planetary and universial lifeforce called the gaya. It is always fun to see a movie so concerend with, what is essentially, a derivative of Hindu philosophy. It is a very unobtrusive idea and it is presented as pure fantasy rather than dogma. In a way, this film serves as an introduction to this type of thinking, just as "Star Wars" and "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" do. Final Fantasy definately keeps your attention. The action scenes are extremely compelling, and, for the most part, the computer generated human faces do a good job with displaying real human emotion (saddness isn't quite nailed to perfection, but what the heck?). It seemed sort of odd to me that this film would be so loaded with recogniziable voices. Recognizable are those of Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, Ving Rhaymes, Steve Buscemi and James Woods. I don't understand why shuch a star-studded cast was assembled because it must have been a tremendous expense and, judging from the spectacular graphics, this film already had a huge budget. Maybe this was intended simply as a symbol that no expense would be spared, and, indeed, the vocal performances are all superb. I couldn't help but wonder if this movie might have been more effective as a live action feature. Certainly the plot was strong enough to carry it and it didn't seem as though the filmakers engaged in a lot of scenes that couldn't have been constructed with live performers. In many ways it looked like a standard movie, I was hoping they would do something radical like have the whole film be one continuous shot, something that couldn't feasibly be done in a standard movie. Although it is a little creepy to see actual human beings be replaced by computer generated images, all in all this movie is very entertaining and definately worth the time."