I'm no follower of anime (unless it's Studio Ghibli) or manga but I do try to catch their live-action versions where I can, as the genre has thrown up some gems in the past (such as the DEATH NOTE films). As such, watching FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, a Netflix-made version of the popular story series, was an entirely new experience for me. And, truth be told, a hollow one. The story begins with one massive CGI spectacle after another, and then slows down for a crawling, melodramatic mid-section full of family drama and background scheming. Things pick up on the CGI front for another big climax. Speaking of the effects, they range from the excellent (the metal brother) to the less than impressive (the CGI tentacles). The story is set in an interesting, mock European country and has some fun elements of mysticism and alchemy in it, but little is done at the forefront of the narrative. The hero is a youthful, brooding metrosexual who beats on his brother for no reason and always seems to be one step behind the bad guys. The villains are straight from a pantomime. I did enjoy some of the CGI creations - the homunculi look great - but overall there's little here to get excited over.

Full Metal Alchemist was one of-if not-my favorite Japanese anime series. I haven't watched a ton but I have it up there, or above, Inuyasha, Bleach and Naruto. So, needless to say I was excited to see a feature film of Full Metal Alchemist.

I was a little put off to start. The characters in the anime speak Japanese but not a single one of them is actually Japanese (but then again that's the case with just about every Japanese anime) yet all the characters in the movie are Japanese. After I got over the initial shock of a blond Japanese man playing Edward Elric I settled in for the story.

The movie was more-or-less a recap of the entire series. Of course they had to leave a lot out but it seems they captured most of the important moments--although, I don't know if that was a good thing. The show had its run and it didn't make sense to try to recapture it in a movie. Honestly, I think they should've made an entirely different story formatted specifically for a 90-110 minute movie. This movie was around 140 minutes and still missed a lot of things.

The CGI was excellent with the transmutations and most of the characters were spot on: Al in the armor was perfect, Gluttony, Envy and Lust were precise and even Hughes was a great replication of the anime. Even with the excellence of the CGI and the accuracy of the characters I think the movie was too long and should've gone a different direction than trying to recapture the entire series.

I had nothing to base it on - so for me, compared to Hollywood movies where the ideas seem predictable this seemed new and fresh.

I guess if you're familiar with the anime (which I only found out about coming to IMDB) then maybe the good ideas are all straight copies of that. But I dont think that matters to the majority who will not be familiar with it.

When I first started watching it - I couldn't and still cant place exactly where this is supposed to be set. I felt some theft of Harry Potter in the scenes of steam trains chugging through what looks like the English country side, there was even a British phone box at one point. All the lettering of place names were in English but the film was subtitled. So I went from expecting some weird knock off of Harry Potter and his spell casting but then found the premise of the story much more interesting.

Sometimes you want to shout at the screen - when there's impossibly long periods where heroes are confronted by an enemy and stand around not doing anything for what seems like hours. But I think that probably plays into the anime style.

So not my favourite movie ever - but definitely watchable, modern, good effects, nice interesting story line.