20140131: Animation Review--Kaena: The Prophecy

Kaena: the Prophecy

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. French live action feature length film, 2003, PG13, 85 minutes, animation, adventure, fantasy.
2. IMDB: 6.2/10.0 from 3,082 audience ratings. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 7% on the meter; 44% liked it from 5,626 audience ratings.
4. I saw this on Crackle.
5. Directed by: Chris Delaporte, Pascal Pinon.
6. Starring: Kirsten Dunst as Kaena, Richard Harris as Opaz, Anjelica Huston Queen of the Selenites, Michael McShane as Assad, Keith David as Voxem.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The picture starts near a village high on a huge vine called Axis.  One resident is Kaena, a young adult woman who likes to adventure, while the rest of the village is bound to harvesting sap and offering it to the gods.


2. For sassing the priest, she is exiled.  She is captured by an unfamiliar group that is very interested in her because she has curiosity, and will venture beyond the village.


3. Opaz and his people have reconstructed a star ship to return to their home planet.  Kaena sees visions of a repository of knowledge of Opaz' people.


4. After various machinations, the repository opens itself to Kaena, with conflict all around her.


5. Will the disputes among the groups be resolved?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Relentlessly ugly and poor animation meets nearly opaque script.
2. Two stars of five


4. Scores
1. Art/Animation: 2/10  There is seriously too much negative space is the artwork for most of the scenes, rather like the more disgusting parts of the Alien series, or most of H. R. Giger's paintings or sculptures.  It is mostly dark, dull, depressing, surreal, and hideous. Other parts of the film are overly bright and washed out.  Neither of these habits is attractive or 'eye candy' as I have seen this monstrosity described so often. Here and there I see serious frame jumps, the kind one sees in a flip book.


2. Sound: 2/10 Amazingly bad leveling.  Keep your hand near the volume control.  This detracted seriously from the voice acting.


3. Acting: 4/10 Richard Harris and Keith David were fine; Kirsten Dunst was much better than I expected.  The queen and so many others were just terrible.


4. Screenplay: 3/10 Next to opaque.  Exposition of motivations was a distant, never achieved goal.