The animators who worked on Final Fantasy did everything in their power to make its virtual cast come to life. When watching the entirely computer generated "actors" talk, move, and interact, it's hard not to think about the man-hours that went into animating every eyelash, freckle, and pore. For this achievement alone, Final Fantasy is worth a viewing.

Unfortunately, the people in charge of the story and dialogue seem to have put an inverse amount of effort into the film. You have to ask: if you are going to create such amazingly realistic animated characters and find well-known actors to voice their dialogue, why on earth would you have them spout lines that would be considered hack on childrens' Saturday morning cartoons?

Final Fantasy is the rare film that makes you wish it had a mute button. The visual experience is so fantastic that you won't want to have it ruined by the deadweight story. To wit: Earth has been invaded by mysterious alien creatures called Phantoms that are invisible (at certain times) can penetrate any substance (except "The Barrier") and don't appear to be alive (except they can be killed). To rid Earth of the Phantoms, the super evil General Hein (voiced super evilly by James Woods) wants to shoot the Zeus cannon at Earth. This would hurt Earth's feelings, reasons Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), who believes that finding the right combination of spirits will rid the Earth of phantoms.

Dr. "Of Course!" Sid has discovered that all living things have a spirit that resonates at a certain frequency. A combination of the right eight spirits will kill all the Phantoms. To find these spirits, Dr. Sid's young protégé, Aki (Ming-Na) scans the planet from space, trying to pinpoint each living creature. It's a tedious job, but Aki has been infected by a Phantom (don't ask) and her time is running out. Aided by the Deep Eyes squadron, Grey, Neil, Jane and Ryan (Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, and Ving Rhames, respectively) Aki tries to find the remaining three spirits before General Hein does something stupid, in following his super evil villain idiom.

If the plot sounds confusing, don't worry. It will be repeated until your spirit will want to leave the theater, screaming and pulling out its spiritual hair. The story never makes sense, and all you really need to know is that the forces of evil are red, and the forces of good are blue. On second thought, you might just want to bring a Walkman and listen to some good music while you watch the film.

The flesh and blood actors voicing their roles don't have much to do (except refrain from laughing at their lines). Oddly, having unknown voices might have served the characters better. You'll constantly be wondering, "Who is that?" during scenes. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi's only previous directing credits are for the Final Fantasy video games, and it shows. As for screenwriters Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar, they owe the animators an apology. The characters look fantastic and sound like idiots. Perhaps the script should have been computer generated as well.