CW

Thank you, Athena. Thank you so very, very much. While I was watching this movie, I wondered if I was the only one who wasn't getting what the movie was all about. I figured, maybe I'm not smart enough to get the movie, or maybe I was just tired or something. But to find out that other people had problems with it makes me feel a lot better.

I've been assured that the original source material is much better, and certainly there are some stories that shouldn't have been made into movies. Something must've been lost in the translation because this movie seemed more like an animated episode of Trailer Park Boys in places, rather than a science fiction story written by one of the better known names in the genre.

I didn't feel like there was a real need to rotoscope the movie, and I didn't get anything out of it that I wouldn't have gotten out of a Matrix-style treatment of the story. But then, there wasn't enough of a story to warrant another big budget imitation of The Matrix. And for most of the movie, I was just thinking, "What just happened?" The end tied it all together nicely, but in the end, I just felt like I'd watched something that should've been a one hour Twilight Zone episode, and not a feature length movie.

This is certainly not the worst animated movie I've seen, but it's close. I promise, I do actually like movies! Just... not the ones I've been watching lately.

I honestly don't know where to begin with this review. There seems to be so many things I want to comment about and complain about with this movie that I'd have better luck throwing darts at a dartboard to decide where to start, than to come up with a decent opening on my own. There's the amateurish telling of the story, the dependence on visuals to tell us what's going on, the awful lighting effects that obscure the visuals, the... aaaah. Give me a moment, I'm going to go MacGyver up a dartboard.

Okay, here we go.

The story of Kaena is... kind of hard to figure out, if not for the ever so helpful TV guide, and the listing here at Keyframe. A girl who dreams of stuff has to protect her people and her home from some creatures who want to destroy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within all over again.

As it happens, the story is shown rather than told, in the actions of the characters and in the visuals and setting. While the back story of the movie is explained at one point by one of the characters, for the most part everything happening in the present has to be both seen and heard. This wouldn't have been a problem, except for the rather liberal use of lighting. I don't think I've ever seen as badly lit a movie as Kaena was. It's almost as if they were trying to hide errors in animation by using lights far too bright to make anything out, or maybe this was their way to keep from having to put much thought in the backgrounds for the movie. The sad thing is, there doesn't need to be so much lighting. While watching Kaena, I was reminded of the lighting in the "End of the World" episode of Doctor Who. And yet, even in that episode, when parts of the television screen were literally white with light, you could still make everything out. Not so in Kaena. And this is a shame, because much of the movie is beautiful... it's just hard to see that beauty when it's hidden by too much light.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well: in scenes where bright light isn't present, it's often too dark to make out many of the details. There are entire scenes in the bad guys' lair where you can't see a lot of the detail because of the poor way the scene was animated.

And speaking of animation, this movie would probably be better suited as a short television series, maybe something like ReBoot or the aforementioned Doctor Who. Elements of the movie were too rushed to be effective, poorly executed in what seemed like an attempt to keep the movie short. It's like if they tried to make the entire third season of ReBoot into a two hour movie. It's just not going to happen.

The characters' expressions and actions remind me a lot of the kind of animation ReBoot featured in the mid to late 90's, which sadly means this movie is 5-10 years after its time. This is not a good thing. There were a few places where elements of the background that should have reacted to the characters were instead static and unmoving, like in a video game. And speaking of which, throughout the movie, I was reminded of the animation from the FMV cut scenes in the video game "The Legend of Dragoon", and that isn't a good thing either.

I was both surprised and not surprised that there was a song at the end of the movie, and was disappointed that during half of it, the singer was just crying out Kaena's name, as if the song was about her. The fact that I didn't turn off the movie then shows how much of a glutton for punishment I can be at times; the fact that I didn't turn off the movie earlier shows how much of an optimist I can be at times. Alas, the movie didn't improve, and the resolution at the end makes you go "huh?". I am trying not to give away too much, but I admit that I somehow lost track of where the priest went near the end, and the bad guys seemed to just cancel each other out. Imagine three people bullying you, and then suddenly two of them meet each other and decide to go away together, and the third somehow learns the error of their ways by standing around and thinking for a moment, then disappears forever as pennance. That's how hollow an ending Kaena had.

As this is an English dub, I can't help but wonder if something was lost in the translation. I can't help but wonder how closely the English translation follows the actual story. And yet... I don't care enough for the movie to find out. This could be one of those really cerebral movies that only a select few get, or this could just be another stinker that shouldn't have been made in the first place. After posting this review, I'll stop caring. It's not terrible enough to remain burned forever in my mind (that animated Dinotopia movie is still taunting me, and it's been quite some time since I saw it), and yet it's not good enough to watch again. I have no problem recommending this movie to no one, and I would in fact recommend that not even the reviewers on Keyframe watch it. It may never get enough reviews to be eligible for the Top 5 Worst Feature Films list, but it doesn't matter. I'll always consider it one of the worst computer animated movies I've ever sat down to watch, and my only consolation is that I didn't pay money to see it.