Kaena is a fun fantasy ride through gorgeous cgi animation

The movie takes place in a planet (or plant i should say) called Axis. The people of Axis live their lives according to the "Gods". The movie centers around a teenage outcast named Kaena. Kaena is an explorer and dreamer who believes greater things exist outside the small land of Axis. As the resources of the land start to drain out, the Gods become angrier and more demanding. Kaena, doubting the existence of the Gods, is sent away. On her journey, she searches for the answers she's always dreamed of. Maybe there is life out there in the "great oblivion"...

I'm really not sure why this movie received such bad reviews. It may not be the most complex story in the world, but it's still enough to capture the viewer's interest. It also has surprising good voice acting performed by Kirsten Dunst (who voices Kaena) and the late Richard Hariss. Even Greg Proops makes a decent comedic performance as a worm. Not to mention, the animation is spectacular, especially the scenery. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie.

Recommend if: *you enjoy anime/animation *you like fantasy/science fiction

Avoid if: *you have younger children (they may find some of the creatures scary)

OK, let's get the bad news out of the way right now. The plot is weak. There are some gaping silly holes in the story, numerous unexplained critter origins, shaky science, and a few threads that don't resolve at all. Automatic scoring deductions, across the board.

So what's good about the movie? First, the graphics. This is the natural evolution of French animation, of which there isn't nearly enough. Rene' Laloux's "Fantastic Planet" is one of the all-time animated psychotropic classics, and there is much in this film that pays homage to it: the visuals of the Axis "forest", the xenomorphic life forms, the conflict between master and slave races, etcetera. At the same time, the animation technique is the sort of hyper-real CGI used in Final Fantasy/Spirits Within, where each hair follicle is individually rendered. Like these two sibling films, Kaena abounds with brilliant bong hit graphics and mind-bending action sequences.

One common pitfall for animated features, particularly those of foreign origin, is the voice acting. To its immense credit, Kaena has a fairly decent dub, and I felt none of the accustomed grumpiness that comes with de-synced speech for any of the characters. The main characters were all well voiced. The IMDb cast list doesn't appear to mention all the voice actors, and I'm pretty sure the little kid was voiced by the same person who plays Shippo on Inuyasha (Jillian Michaels?). Sounds that way, at least.

However, while the voice acting is fine, the same cannot be said for the dialog. Long in exposition and short in character development, I get the feeling that this was an editor's nightmare. The balance between ensuring that people understand events and helping them care about the consequences of those events can be a difficult one to achieve. This has been the bane of science fiction films since the genre's inception. Unfortunately, dialog in Kaena finds a way to fail on both sides of the equation -- albeit at different times.

Without revealing any more details, I will say this much. The story tries to operate on a grand scale, but is undercut by the uneven development, jerky scene transitions, mediocre dialog, and the aforementioned plot-holes.

This is a film to be enjoyed as a raw sensory experience, not as a total cinematic product. It's not going to end up on any top-20-all-time lists and its pretensions to epic film status are undercut by its many weaknesses.

The overall effect, however, is extraordinary; it merits viewing as an exploration of what can now be accomplished with CGI. I enjoyed it immensely from this perspective, to the point where I was quite distracted from the numerous shortcomings.

The most striking aspect of "Kaena: The Prophecy" were the CG visuals. If you enjoy that type of presentation and want to spend some time with this movie, you'll probably enjoy it -- otherwise, if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to see something else.

The characters are partially developed, so we know who they are, and when conflict occurs, we care somewhat about the outcome. However, the story was a definite drag on the movie. Perhaps it's my own pet peeves about names of things and people that are simply slung into the middle of a sequence, with no real explanation or background to accompany it. I know I prefer to understand what the characters are talking about, rather than have a new name dropped in "hey, look at this cool name for a person/character/device/planet I thought up." I don't mind if a character doesn't understand everything that's going on -- but I at least like to have a clue about what they're talking about.

That, plus the very stylized, heavy cgi presentation will probably limits the films wider appeal. Shots of flowing liquid and aspects of things that are difficult to tell whether they are liquid or solid are interesting up to a point -- but I know I have a low threshold for them.

Kirsten Dunst did a good job, since although I knew she did the voice of Kaena, it didn't make me think of her, as some voice actors do. The late Richard Harris' work was fine, but his voice was so distinctive I did think of him rather than the character at times. Much of the deficiencies in the writing are in his character's lines (since his character understands more).

Also for a movie that added "The Prophecy" to its title -- I expected more of a formal prophecy in the storyline.

So, overall, not terrible. CG-lovers will like it of course, but I wouldn't see people going in droves to see it.