I searched for this, but didn't see it posted...
From Variety.com:
Painstakingly designed, hyperrealistically detailed and utterly impenetrable to everyone except fans of the original computer game on which it's based, CGI-fabricated tale "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" reps a soulless slab of Japanimation -- neither a final installment nor exceptionally fantastic -- with little crossover potential. A cinematic spinoff of the seventh in a series of 12 PlayStation "Final Fantasy" games (basis for 2001's "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within""Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"), pic intersperses confusingly edited shoot-'em-up segments with usual anime futuristic guff about haunted warriors, evil multinationals and New Age claptrap.
Pic opens with bright red, wolflike creatures, whose significance is never explained, gamboling through a mountainous landscape before cutting deadpan to a black title card stating "498 years earlier...," striking a humorous note, perhaps unintentional, sadly lacking in rest of film.
A voiceovervoiceover and accompanying images explains how the Earth's "lifeforce" rose up and wiped out a whole load of bad guys some time before. Many survivors, particularly film's posse of cutesy orphans, are suffering from mark-leaving disease called Gostigma.
In the devastated city of Midgar, blond hero Cloud (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai) runs a delivery service in association with superbabe Tifa (voiced by upcoming ingenue Ayumi Ito) and others. While out in the outlying badlands one day, he runs afoul of a gang of three silvery-haired biker boys led by Kadaj, who wants to be reunited with his "mother""Mother" (seemingly some genetic thingy called Jenova that produced a race of superwarriors).
Kadaj lures orphans in Cloud's care to a swamp and feeds them water that cures their Gostigma but also turns them temporarily evil.
These sci-fi narrative stylings are merely irritating chatter that fills in the bits between the big fight and battle sequences in every reel, opportunities for the animators to show off swish new textures like smoke that becomes corporeal and flashy lighting effects that bounce off the semi-mechanical monsters under the bad guys' control. Centerpiece is a huge ruckus in the city center which pitches Cloud and Co. -- an assortment of characters seemingly culled from earlier incarnations of the "Final Fantasy" games -- against the Kadaj cadre and a dragonlike beast wearing samurai armor.
In typical computer-game style, each battle is with a yet more ferocious foe until Cloud finally faces off against the supposedly super-nasty Sephiroth from earlier in the franchise's story.
Little attention has been paid to designing the action so that it unfolds in a mentally mappable environment, or to crafting a story accessible to newbies unfamiliar with "Final Fantasy" backstory. Although skin texture is photorealistic, the characters' faces, as is often the case in anime, have a very limited range of expressions.
Hyperactive editing further frustrates general comprehension. Music by Nobuo Uematsu alternates between sparse piano noodlings, pop metal thrashings and cloying power ballads for the closing credits.
Camera (color), Nozue Takeshi; editor, Kenji Kijima; music, Nobuo Uematsu; art director, Yuusuke Naora; main character designer, Nomura; mechanic, creature design, Takayuki Takeya; sound designer (Dolby Digital), Shojiro Nakaoka. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (out of competition), Aug. 30, 2005. Running time: 100 MIN.
From Variety.com:
Painstakingly designed, hyperrealistically detailed and utterly impenetrable to everyone except fans of the original computer game on which it's based, CGI-fabricated tale "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" reps a soulless slab of Japanimation -- neither a final installment nor exceptionally fantastic -- with little crossover potential. A cinematic spinoff of the seventh in a series of 12 PlayStation "Final Fantasy" games (basis for 2001's "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within""Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"), pic intersperses confusingly edited shoot-'em-up segments with usual anime futuristic guff about haunted warriors, evil multinationals and New Age claptrap.
Pic opens with bright red, wolflike creatures, whose significance is never explained, gamboling through a mountainous landscape before cutting deadpan to a black title card stating "498 years earlier...," striking a humorous note, perhaps unintentional, sadly lacking in rest of film.
A voiceovervoiceover and accompanying images explains how the Earth's "lifeforce" rose up and wiped out a whole load of bad guys some time before. Many survivors, particularly film's posse of cutesy orphans, are suffering from mark-leaving disease called Gostigma.
In the devastated city of Midgar, blond hero Cloud (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai) runs a delivery service in association with superbabe Tifa (voiced by upcoming ingenue Ayumi Ito) and others. While out in the outlying badlands one day, he runs afoul of a gang of three silvery-haired biker boys led by Kadaj, who wants to be reunited with his "mother""Mother" (seemingly some genetic thingy called Jenova that produced a race of superwarriors).
Kadaj lures orphans in Cloud's care to a swamp and feeds them water that cures their Gostigma but also turns them temporarily evil.
These sci-fi narrative stylings are merely irritating chatter that fills in the bits between the big fight and battle sequences in every reel, opportunities for the animators to show off swish new textures like smoke that becomes corporeal and flashy lighting effects that bounce off the semi-mechanical monsters under the bad guys' control. Centerpiece is a huge ruckus in the city center which pitches Cloud and Co. -- an assortment of characters seemingly culled from earlier incarnations of the "Final Fantasy" games -- against the Kadaj cadre and a dragonlike beast wearing samurai armor.
In typical computer-game style, each battle is with a yet more ferocious foe until Cloud finally faces off against the supposedly super-nasty Sephiroth from earlier in the franchise's story.
Little attention has been paid to designing the action so that it unfolds in a mentally mappable environment, or to crafting a story accessible to newbies unfamiliar with "Final Fantasy" backstory. Although skin texture is photorealistic, the characters' faces, as is often the case in anime, have a very limited range of expressions.
Hyperactive editing further frustrates general comprehension. Music by Nobuo Uematsu alternates between sparse piano noodlings, pop metal thrashings and cloying power ballads for the closing credits.
Camera (color), Nozue Takeshi; editor, Kenji Kijima; music, Nobuo Uematsu; art director, Yuusuke Naora; main character designer, Nomura; mechanic, creature design, Takayuki Takeya; sound designer (Dolby Digital), Shojiro Nakaoka. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (out of competition), Aug. 30, 2005. Running time: 100 MIN.
