Great, but not perfect
The story of the movie was simple and required some speculation. The movie never explains where the villains come from or how they can do the things they do. It never clearly explains why Kadaj's gang refers to Cloud as their "big brother". Those in the know realize that Sephiroth (FF7's villain) was created from Jenova cells (which Sephiroth refers to as his mother) and those cells were implanted in a bunch of other people, including Cloud, who is a clone of Sephiroth (I didn't even remember that until I watched the "Reminiscence of FFVII" feature on the DVD). Sephiroth said (in FF7) that the cells always come back together, terming it "Reunion". That's basically what drives Kadaj and company, but the movie never makes this clear. With this understanding, everything makes more sense, but I believe the movie could have done more to explain that. An added bit of explanation in Marlene's flashback in the beginning of the movie would have helped greatly. Other than that, the story is fine, still simple, but it works. Story: 7/10
The CG was of course stunning, in fact it was probably the best-looking CG-animated movie I'd ever seen. Everything looks extremely real and yet retains the look of a more serious anime. The characters and their wild hairstyles (especially Cloud's and Sephiroth's) look believable, you can see all the imperfections in leather and other textures; overall everything looks great. The action is incredible, too, really visceral, fast and intense. You just have to suspend your disbelief for a while and remember that this is a movie based on a video game, whose story takes place in a world other than our own. Sometimes you just have to ignore how high characters can jump or how long they've actually been in the air to allow yourself to enjoy what the developers are trying to express. Graphics: 10/10
As far as sound goes, the music is perfect. The movie is full of remixed tunes directly from FF7 including the fight music, a boss fight theme and the Turks' theme, as well as new tracks. The voice acting is a mixed bag though. Of course, being that the movie was originally made in Japanese, and the English voice actors had to compensate for the lip movements, you expect some stumbles, but a lot of people just don't seem to try hard enough. In my opinion, Cid and Barrett were the worst. Tifa is a mixed bag, sometimes okay, sometimes not so good. Cloud was okay for the most part, Kadaj and his buddies, Vincent, Reno and Rude were all well done. Everyone else was pretty much in the middle. Overall, the English voice acting could have been better--I've seen anime movies that were dubbed in English and sounded great: Cowboy Bebop the Movie, Appleseed (the new CG version) and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust to name a few. Music: 10/10 Voice: 5/10
My bare bones critique:
+ Excellent looking CG
+ Awesome action/fights
+ Great music
- Simplistic story that skips a lot of important details
- Not long enough
- Unbalanced English dubbing
Final rating: 8/10