Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within may be getting high marks for digital wizardry from critics, but some are suggesting that its synthespians may not be big enough attractions to lure crowds into the theater. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News observes that while the film itself may be the most significant of the summer, the characters are not human enough to get us past the stunt factor. Likewise, Jay Carr in the Boston Globe remarks that in a summer filled with questionings and explorations of the boundaries between human and artificial, Final Fantasy has landmark written all over it. Yet he, too observes that the computer-created stars are put through their paces by a weak and mundane script that's quite unworthy of them. Indeed, several critics suggest that the story is about as skimpy as any video game's. Writes Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times: For every advance in the world of special effects, narrative is pushed back a few squares on the game board or, in this case, the circuit board. Or as Geoff Pevere puts it in the Toronto Star: What really prevents the movie from forging any bold new pathways into the future is the utterly retrograde nature of the plot and dialogue. All of the reviewers remark that although the computer-generated stars are fascinating to behold, their artificiality is always apparent. The sight of these characters getting romantic is about as involving as watching two expensive mannequins kissing in a Macy's window, Kenneth Turan observes in the Los Angeles Times. Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News remarks: These are 3-D beings who look completely human and yet completely Other. Their eyes, like much of the movie, seem empty and mostly expressionless. They're not just like real people; they're like really boring people. Or, more specifically, characters from a video game, not a movie. And Jonathan Foreman concludes in the New York Post that the film's strange lifelessness reminds you of the all-important energy real-life actors bring to the screen.