Somebody somewhere must be fascinated by the computer-generated people -- hyperReal characters -- at the heart of a new movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Much has been made of the fact that photo-realistic animation gets very close to creating lifelike digital actors. It must be tricky indeed to arrange pixels in a way that mimics the expressionless line delivery and wooden behaviour that comes out of Hollywood, but what do we know?

Animation breakthrough aside, the main thing about Final Fantasy is that it is really, really boring. Watching the computer-generated characters gets you through the first 30 minutes -- you're completely out of the movie, of course -- but after that it is difficult not to sit back and fervently hope that the whole thing stops soon.

Final Fantasy is set in the future. Duh.

The earth looks like a pile of burnt toast, and strange, translucent aliens hover around sucking out earthlings' souls. Yes, you may feel some of these aliens look a tad familiar, but this time, they're see-through!

Among the remaining humans are Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na) and Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland) and they are trying to create a force against the aliens that is organic, created from eight different spirit waves, but stop us if you've heard this one before.

Everybody else just wants to nuke the buggers.

(Also in the cast are Alec Baldwin, voicing the character of a military guy who loves Aki Ross; Steve Buscemi voices a humorous pilot.)

It becomes necessary to take a ship into the heart of the alien invasion, a big crater. Miss Aki Ross is in a bit of a hurry, as she is busy growing an alien in her bosom and has to figure out a way to move this anti-alien thing along in brisk fashion.

A bad guy, General Hein (James Woods) decides to nuke the aliens anyway, which just makes their alien spirit thingy stronger, and before you know it the gelatinous aliens have glommed together into some kind of orange spaghetti that can take over the world.

Anyway, that's what we saw. The characters don't really seem at all like humans, despite the carefully drawn pores and the individual strands of hair. Watching Final Fantasy is like watching a comic book instead of reading it. There is something truly oppressive about the whole experience.

Final Fantasy is based on a very popular interactive game. Fans of the game and animation keeners may find something to like in the movie. All others beware. (More on: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within).

(This film is rated PG)

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