I could go through my list of things I usually say when I give a film a low star-rating... poor animation quality, unsympathetic characters, weak dialogue, lousy story structure... all of which "Ark" certainly qualifies for... however, "Ark" gets a new one added to the list--poor direction.

If there are any fans of the TV series "Firefly" out there you're probably like me in that after you watched the entire DVD set--all *sniff* 14 episodes--you may have flipped on the audio commentary in search of more Firefly material. In the first episode of the series, Joss Whedon talks about the importance of the audience understanding the layout of the crew's spaceship, Serenity. There were several shots whose primary purpose was to guide the audience through the ship so that they knew where the bridge was in relation to the mess, and where the mess was in relation to the cargo hold and so on. I don't think I appreciated exactly how important something like this is for an audience until I watched "Ark" last night.

Numerous times, particularly in the fight sequences, I was completely at a loss as to where I was in relation to the action. In the final climatic battle it was at the point where you could get a sense that "bad stuff was happening" but it was totally unclear what exactly was going on. Only after the intercut shots of things falling apart do we get a line from one of the characters that's like "the city pod is detaching!" or whatever... but wouldn't it have been much, MUCH more powerful if the director could've shown us that rather than have us have to tell us about it later.

Yes, young writers and directors... show don't tell... very, very important.

As for the rest... it's not a bad concept even if it doesn't exactly diverge from its parent genre very far--teenage girl + battling robots... holy anime.

The design work on the robots is nicely done, although the people look like they were pulled out of a mediocore game cinematic. The body animation screams mocap and the facial animation is right up there with Final Fantasy: Spirits Within--porcelain-faced and grossly lacking in emotion.

This could've been a good movie with a unique vision, but it ultimately falls on its face due to poor execution.