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Best movie of this year hands down!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This movie is set on a different planet. It starts with an unknown force destroying the people of a naturalistic utopia civilization. A soldier is set out on a mission to investigate this force. The story is interesting with the force slowly being revealed and then battled. There is also an interesting time travel concept which makes it more mysterious. I thought it got a little too fast-paced near the end though. The best part about this movie is the animation. It's not very refined or high quality but the style and the creativity in the design of this world and it's creatures is amazing. Most of the characters aren't interesting though. At all. The main protagonist has absolutely no personality throughout the movie and his voice acting isn't very good either,and his love interest has a bit more but still is more like a cipher. The only other main character, the villain is much better with his manipulative and all-knowing personality, and creepy voice acting. Despite it's flaws, I think this movie would be great for animation and science fiction fans.

It's not as bad as some people want to make you think. "Time Masters" is much better, but if you like "Time Masters" (and like it much more than "The Fantastic Planet") then you'll probably like "Gandahar" (aka "Light Years") too. It's true, it has a lot of talk, but that's because it HAS a real story instead of other so called adult animation movies. The music wasn't bad (I even find it good), but especially one music was getting on my nerves at the end of the film. The animation isn't a breakthrough either, but with it's light effects and the fantastic backgrounds it was 100 times better than the animation in Fantastic Planet. On the other hand it's falling to dust if compared to the best Japanese animation films at that time like "Akira" for example.Go and decide for yourself!

Some interesting ideas but best left in a book or at least a better adaptation, please. This is the sort of thing that gives non-children's animation a bad name, and SCI-FI for that matter. A meandering plot, no engaging characters to care about, no emotional engagement what so ever. It feels like the whole thing has been turned to stone. Oh and the animation is terrible. US and Japanese techniques at this time were years ahead. It is so crude and dull it makes mid-80's Scooby Doo look like Toy Story! But more important and unforgivable is the story and characters. And it takes itself so seriously. Interestingly it shows a race that creates without any regard for what will happen in the future and those things come back to destroy them. e.g. Osama, Saddam... But there was no punishment for those who created the monsters, just a nasty demise for the monsters for being evil. What is this trying to teach?

It's not an outstanding movie by any means, but it gets the job done and entertains. One has to remember that when viewing sci-fi often the plot takes precedence over character. Most plot driven films and stories are like that: We're given the bare bones of our protagonist, and watch him or her weave their way through a story.Such it is with "Light Years." The animation is certainly above the quality of your typical commercial studio, but is not as dazzling as say a Japanese Anime space opera, nor a Disney Production feature; but it does have a certain quality unto itself. Even so the movie could've used more shots (cutaways and general coverage) to help move the story and highlight the characters more. As it stands more the shots are rather static, and the animation in them shifts gears a little too often. In some scene the animation is very smooth, where other times is seems very long and drawn out, or just not well staged.The film itself has action, but some of the it is stilted and painfully slow, where other times it moves quite well. The dubbing is adequate, though, like all dubbed films, one gets the sense that it doesn't quite catch the tones and inflections of the voices from the original French cast.Technology and regimented existence are pitted against the organic and under-dogs of Ghandahar in a typical sci-fi theme. The film's worth a night's rental, and if you like collecting rare sci-fi this might be one to add to your collection. Otherwise it may only be worth a single viewing.*EDIT* French Region 2 DVD review, Jan 3, 2010Well, I finally saw the original French film in all its entirety. As an American I have to say that I appreciate the additional footage, and can nod at the more subtle pacing, but I do have to say that I think the Americanized version has some pluses going for, namely in the music. The original French score underlines the basic theme of what is being presented. There are no heroics on the battlefield nor purely desperate moments as would be conveyed by the American musical score. The other subtleties are apparent, and I think I better understand why the American producers did what they did by sexing up what they could. The French film is more prosaic and "European" (for lack of a better term) in its presentation of a world in crisis. There's an emotional malaise characteristic of European cinema as a whole that comes across in the original French version. There's a subtle (and not so subtle) nihilistic quality here. Perhaps there's a bit of Nazi occupation still resonating within this film.All I can really say is that it's a different film from the American version. I'm not sure I prefer one too much over the other. There's a lack of celebration in the French film. There's a kind of fatalistic quality to that is twisted but still present in the American version. Whereas the French version of this film emphasizes weathering the storm and completing the objective, the American version emphasizes confronting the challenge in a way that we Americans have always done. There's a lack of ambient depression that seems to hang and mildly envelope European art, film included. A kind of ethereal drawn out emotionalism that you'd never see in an American film, but is fairly strong in Russian and Swedish cinema, and hits French and Italian films in a less powerful vein.I would be interested in seeing a DVD of the American version to make a more thought out and proper comparison. But I guess that'll have to wait.