FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (2001) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia April 13th, 2002 RATING: Two stars
As groundbreaking and inventive as some of the visuals may be in "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," it is also one crushing bore of a movie. Hardly spirited or involving is putting it mildly - it is completely ineffectual. At least Angelina Jolie had some pizazz in the turgid "Tomb Raider," the latter based on a video game like almost any movie of late.
"Final Fantasy" is set in the Planet Earth in the year 2065. Dr. Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na) is the heroine of the story, presumably having visions of some kind of apocalypse where alien-like apparitions roam the earth, crushing everything in their path. She is prepared to do battle with these spirits whom she concedes are made of eight "spirit waves" of Earth, also known as some kind of planetary soul. She gets help from her paternal teacher, Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), and her band of fighters which include Ryan (Ving Rhames), Neil (Steve Buscemi, who as usual gets all the best lines), Jane Proudfoot (Peri Gilpin), and her on and off again boyfriend, Gray Edwards (Alec Baldwin).
"Final Fantasy" is the first fully-animated film using CGI effects to create human characters, or so you are led to believe. The special-effects are often wonderful, as are the nightmarish visions. I also liked how these wraithlike creatures suck the essence of every human they touch, literally sucking their soul. But the human characters are so pallid and inert and so lacking in any emotional context that I felt I was watching a mortuary special where people are reanimated as computer images. They are lifelike to be sure but completely unconvincing in showing emotional responses, including Dr. Aki who is both sullen and depressed throughout the film. In fact, those seem to be the singular expressions of every single character.
"Final Fantasy" has some astonishing visuals but the story and the characters leave a lot to be desired. A purely soulless movie experience.
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