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 ruth be told, the only notable thing about
"Kaena: The Prophecy", which is hyped as the first French 3D
animated film ever, is that American movie star Kirsten Dunst is the voice
of the lead character, the titular Kaena. Which, by itself, brings some
baggage, in particular the fact that everytime you hear Dunst's voice you
can't help but wonder why Kaena isn't blonde and spunky, but is instead
brown-skinned, a little bald on the forehead, and walking around in a very
revealing loin cloth. And let's not even get into the fact that Kaena, as
envisioned by the computer animators, have abnormally big breasts that, on a
real human girl, would probably have caused some severe back problems by age
10. Kaena looks to be in her late teens.
"Kaena" follows the
adventures of young Kaena, a free-spirited girl who lives in the Axis, a
sort of tree city surrounded by clouds. Kaena's people, primitive humanoids
who ranches and eats large fat worms, spend their time worshipping unseen
Gods that lives in the trees. These Gods demand that the villagers harvest
saps for them, because -- well, I don't really know what these false Gods,
who are actually a dying species of sap-loving monsters called Selenites, do
with all that sap. I guess they cover their bodies with it and roll around
in it all day, or some such.
In any case, the Selenites have
been using Kaena's people as slaves to harvest the saps for hundreds of
years -- or 600 years, to be exact, ever since intergalactic aliens crashed
onto the planet (shown in the prologue) and created the Axis. Now the
Selenites, who blames the aliens for invading them (don't ask), are led by a
Queen (voiced by Anjelica Huston) obsessed with destroying a glowing blue
orb, which also happens to be the last remaining artifact of the alien race,
come hell or high water. Or more precisely hell, as what remains of the
Selenites are slowly dying off because the Queen refuses to mate with the
only living male Selenite (voiced by Keith David).
It's all very confusing, to be
sure, and I haven't even touched on the fact that Kaena, after getting cast
out of the village for daring to question the fire and brimstone High
Priest, meets up with the sole survivor of the alien species that crashed on
the planet hundreds of years ago. The alien (Richard Harris) has geared up
some worms with exo-skeletons, and they're fixing up his ship --
Oh, whatever. It's all jumbled, uninteresting
nonsense anyway.
Running at 80 minutes, "Kaena" would
probably have worked better as a two-hour movie. Mind you, I'm not saying
that I would have sat through all two hours of it, as even at 80 minutes
"Kaena" is already tedious and dreadfully dull. The only real
interest I had with the film is wondering what race the Axis people were
patterned after. They seem to be African in appearance, with dark skin and
tribal birthmarks. But their religion seems to be patterned after Islam.
And how come Kaena has such big breasts, and how come they never bother
her as she's slinging her way through the movie? You'd think having
breasts that big would prevent her from all those gravity-defying moves
she pulls off, but strangely, they don't.
Being that "Kaena" is a completely computer
animated movie (the first of its kind for the French, as you'll remember),
the focus should be on the screen. In that respect, the movie does look
good, if not overly impressive. Most of the time the film tries to
convince you that you're looking at something grand and marvelous by
pumping up the orchestral score on the soundtrack, but the visuals just
don't quite close the deal. There's no real "wow" factor in the
look of Axis, and almost all of the character designs, particularly in the
character movements, are jerky and unrealistic. This is made worst during
the action scenes.
The only real visual standout is in the design of the
Selenites, but unfortunately they spend all their time hiding out
underneath the trees swimming (or bathing) in sap. And I'm still not all
that clear as to why they need the sap, except to use it as some kind of
24-7 bubble bath.
Although there's a lot of swinging, sliding, and
quite a bit of falling (a lot of falling, actually) by Kaena (and
mostly just Kaena, as the rest of the cast doesn't really seem to do
anything), the film isn't actually action-packed. Much of the action
revolves around Kaena jumping or falling or swinging around Axis; or she's
running from the occasional flying monsters that try to eat her. Comedy
relief is provided by Greg Proops, a prissy comedian in real life who is
perfect as the prissy worm Gommy. Michael McShane, another comedian, is
the straight man to Proops' wiseguy, and Richard Harris sounds so, so very
tired. No surprise, as "Kaena" would turn out to be the last
movie he would do before his death in October of 2002. In an ironic twist,
his character also dies in the movie.
I don't mean to give the impression that
"Kaena" is a total failure, just this: it may be the first of
its kind, but it's just not the best. The visuals, usually the saving
grace of most animation, is routine stuff here, especially in the
aftermath of films like "Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within", made 2 years ago, and the legion of
Pixar films that have come out since. It was also probably a bad idea to
have someone as well-known as Kirsten Dunst doing the lead female's voice.
Hearing Dunst give voice to someone who looks so much unlike her in every
way is just distracting. Of course it doesn't help that the film really is
not all that interesting. The word "blah" comes to mind.
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