Rating: 
Summary: A LOST FANTASY
Review: This movie is an outstanding example of what digital technology can achieve visually. For this, it deserves 2 stars.
What a pity, however, that so much tecnical effort distracted the makers and made them forget the importance of a good plot.
This is truly a lost opportunity, an anti-statement in sci-fi.
Maybe next time the combination of this tecnicians with the ideas provided in the stories of people like Bradbury, Henlein, Asimov, will achieve the final fantasy: a digital masterpiece that will score as Blade Runner did in its time........
Rating: 
Summary: When will Hollywood learn?
Review: Enough of these terrible film addaptions, already! First Tomb Raider now this..."Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is my pick for the worst video game addapted for the big screen ever. Where's the Fantasy, exactly (and I quote "It is not Fantasy, it is true")? It takes place in New York, there's no use of magic at all, no guardians (or aeons, as they're now called), and none of the FF series's trademark cinematography (eg. the contrast between sunny and dark atmospheres). The characters are boring and flat, it's far too long, and it's plot is needlessly complicated. And (this is the last of my complaining, I promise) there is absolutely no comedy in it, exept for how terrible it is, and even then, it's really more of a sad thing...
Rating:
Summary: An interesting experiment with very disappointing results
Review: I have never played with any of the Final Fantasy games (I don't have the necessary material for it and know noone who does)but I do have an extensive experience of Japanimations (having grown up watching a wide variety of them) and I know that FF fits into that popular trend. In this regard, it seemed to me that this movie was probably meant to be an interesting experimentation, in which Japanese and American teams collaborated to produce something that should have been neither completely American nor completely Japanese. The other aspect of this adventure was also to push further the limit between reality and anime with the help of computer-generated animations. However, the result was a sort of Hollywood Japanimation in which the traditional American movie-making canvas dominated all aspects of the production from the plot to the dialogues, character design and philosophical interpretations (a mix of pieces and bits of shintoism and buddhism)! As has been already said by other reviewers on this site, the animators were not only unable to really give depth and concistency to the characters, whose faces are hardly expressing anything, even in the parts that are supposed to be the most emotional, but also unable to develop the personality between the protagonists. Indeed, all the relationships binding them are extremely simplistic, 2-dimensional and rigid. Most of the outcomes of the story are quite predictable, and eventhough a couple of the good guys dies, as it happens often in Japanimations, Hollywood maniccheism dominates the whole plot and at the end, moral is safe, since the good triumphes over the bad, without forgetting a little touch of Asian philosophy, with the bad entity turned into a beneficial one! Thus, the so-called philosophical content, that should be so rooted in Asian cultures that those who said the story was poor probably simply didn't get it at all (those poor ignorant Americans!!), as some reviewers seem to suggest, simply doesn't even come close to such simplistic Japanese animes as "Cutey Honey" or "Candy, Candy". The antagonism between the self-righteous, rigid, stubborn military, on the one hand, and the open-minded, tolerant, pacific scientist, on the other one, has nothing specifically Japanese and is absolutely not new nor is its treatment original! So, I doubt very much that "Final Fantasy" will be studied in Cinema class like classics such as "Lawrence of Arabia" or, to take more Japanese examples, as "Akira" or " Ghost in the Shell", two animes that have much more chances to make it one day into an academic classes than FF. As far as the graphic themselves are concerned, I wasn't so impressed after all! CG-animations have been around for years, now, and to produce a movie that is completely computer-generated is maybe a technological prowess, but I wonder if all these efforts were really worth the result. Is it so original to absolutely try to make animated characters and landscapes look exactly like real ones? Computer-generated animations is a technique intermediary between cartoon animations and real-life cinema. Does it really have to drag animations as close as possible from latter? I believe that the great advantage of this technology is the possibility to make the unreal look real, thus blurring the bundaries between what we see as the real world and our imagination. But the producers of this movie simply tried to make reality look artificial, but real after all! Since Final Fantasy was derived from a computer game, in which I am sure many actions and locations are completely imaginary, why did they feel the need to reduce it to a flat "reality", and a Hollywood reality, on top of it? During the whole movie, I never had the impression that I was watching real actors! On the contrary, I felt all along that I had robots dressed in artificial human flesh, too smooth and too perfect to be true, trying to act like human beings. Finally, one cannot say that the designers overstrained their imagination on the conception of the characters'physical appearances! They looked so much like your average Hollywood heroes and acted so much like them, that I felt that there was not much left of the Japanese influence in this movie. No, truly, this movie doesn't deserve more than 2 stars, and these are only to acknowledge the technological feat of the producers.
Rating: 
Summary: Good graphics, simple story
Review: The work on graphics is worth to watch the movie. Some times you'll do mistake a CG character for a flesh-and-bones person. The story is simple, but it gives you room for a couple of exciting scenes. I would call it a "light" movie, not to laugh, cry, or think too much (or at all). While watching the movie you might remember Ghostbusters, Terminator, X-men or even some news about military decisions, but much, much lighter. If you liked that movies or like harder things, better look for another option for the weekend.
Rating:
Summary: So close to "fantastic," and yet...
Review: The main thing about this film that grabs the viewer is, naturally, how absolutely stunning the animation is. Best viewed on the big screen to fully appreciate the detail, the film does translate pretty well to DVD. It took years to complete, and the end result has done the animators proud - after a few minutes, I basically forgot that the characters on the screen weren't actors. In fact, I kept getting confused, because there was a very real-looking man running around with Donald Sutherland's voice, but who looked nothing like him at all. There were times when the movement of the bodies was a little too ... "smooth," maybe, but by and large, just wow. The voice work was also very good, with the aforementioned Donald Sutherland, as well as Peri Gilpin, Ming Na, Steve Buscemi, and James Woods. As I mentioned, I frequently almost forgot they were all animated; the fabric moved as fabric moves, their hair was very close to real-looking and moved as hair moves, the characters had pores in their skin, individual eyelashes, and skin blemishes. The effort and CPU time that went into all of this is just overwhelming. The plot left me desirous of something...*more*, however. It wasn't exactly weak...it just wasn't fleshed-out enough (har, no pun intended.) I very much liked the ideas and concepts behind a lot of the story, particularly the earth-based spirituality aspects, but I wasn't satisfied with the resolution. It was kind of "Starship Troopers" meets "Princess Mononoke." Kind of. Until we find out what the "phantoms" are, they're pretty darned scary and mysterious. I really enjoyed them, especially the gigantic and flying phantoms, because they really fed into my phobia of being chased by huge monsters that can kill me. I like to be scared, and the phantoms worked for me in a lot of ways. I can't quite pin down why I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked to, and I'm going to have to go see it again. I guess I was so enamored with some of the film's concepts early on that I really wanted them to be taken further than they were. It was enjoyable, but my hopes were set far too high.
Rating: 
Summary: Exciting!
Review: Terrific visual effect and fantastic atmosphere,with powerful music accompanied, this DVD is worth to buy! Great enjoyment of hearing and vision.
Rating:
Summary: Why so Underrated?
Review: Don't blame me, but I like the storyline and the DVD just the same. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is somewhat underrated by movie critics. I can't explain why. In my point of view, they didn't like it because of it's rapidly changing storyline, and the mix between fantasy and reality.
Rating:
Summary: It's allright...
Review: Truly Magnificent. However, the plot seems little weak...
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD.
Review: If you are a visual effects junky, author your own DVD, or actually like The Spirits Within get this DVD. I haven't a more well designed DVD & that includes that Ape movie. This movie is victim in the clash of American and Japanese cultures. Its not the best storyline to come out of Japan but it was good. The problem lies with audience. Most americans don't get Japanese values, culture, and for those reasons don't get Japanese cinema, which I consider the most enjoyable in the world. It amazes me that Princess Mononoke makes barely 10 million when it came to America in 1999 (which in just world would have been at least nominated for Best Picture in 1997), and The Matrix gets 200 million and 500 worldwide and hailed for its storytelling and style when anyone who has ever dared to see a movie in subtitles will tell you its just a live-action anime flick. As with Princess Mononoke, Final Fantasy is just another victim. Final Fantasy is a well made, well told movie. The story won't win an Oscar, but I'd rather spend 24 bucks on this DVD then 98% of the ...stuff we turn out each year. P.S.-The DVD-rom stuff is great.
Rating:
Summary: Can't wait for the next one to come out
Review: Can't wait for the next one to come out
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