I wouldn't call this so much a movie as it is more of a complete waste of time to anyone who watched the series, even if you didn't watch the series, it's worth the extra 10 hours to do so.
(Note the Animation and Sound portion are copied from the Series review, as they were identical)
Story - 2/10
Unlike the series, the RahXephon Film takes a very simple look at a similar story. From the very start we learn who Haruka is, and she also is now the reason Ayato leaves Tokyo Jupiter. Essentially the story changes from his journey to find out about the blue blood and what was going on, into a journey to find his old love (they try to explain this all by saying people now only lose their memory when their blood turns, but everyone else in Tokyo Jupiter seems to be living like nothing changed, despite not all of them being Mu.)
Along with that change we now have Quon being a sleeping Instrumentalist from the other dimension who only awakens to relay her visions, she'll finally wake for good when Ayato's blood changes. She's no longer a clone but Ayato's Aunt, who came from the Mu dimension with her sister, the other true instrumentalist. I guess the only bright side to this is finding out some information about Ayato's father.
Most other plot lines and stories are just ripped out and thrown away, heck even the main story is just composed of bits from the series with a scene or two thrown in to make them fit, and many of the other pieces not fitting in the slightest.
Animation - 6/10
The character animations for this series were very disappointing. You get the DVDs and everything has amazing art, the Collector's Box, the DVD cases, the booklets, but then watching the show you're just given cookie cutter faces for the characters, who are the meat of the series.
The other parts of the animation are very good, but the Xephons and Background art are just 2/3rds of the series and can't help give the show that lasting quality when it comes to art.
As i mentioned in my soft open, there is also something about the Xephons that, well, lets say is a bit disturbing. They all have a very sexual look to them as if this is the art teams little inside joke.
Sound - 5/10
For a show that is about Instrumentalist and how they must find their song in order to control the RahXephon they really didn't put too much effort into the music of the show. There are a few tunes that are good, but for the most part it's uninteresting mood music that doesn't show too much originality.
The English Vocal performances all were very good, and thats the only reason I gave the show an OK score, they fit the character personalities well and were very diverse. That being said there was one issue that got to me in the English version and decided to switch over to the Japanese track to check. During a few scenes Quon sings her song to the Rahxephon, it just seemed a bit off so I switched over and listened to the Japanese version, it was a nice low song that fit her personality, in the English version it was like a crazy woman screaming at a group of cats in her backyard, it was terrible. I can only guess that the woman they had do the voice over had a terrible singing voice so they just told her to act like an idiot. The voice of Quon also changes the way you perceive her, in the Japanese version she just seems like a soft spoken girl, in the English version she's brain damaged, it's really one of the worst lost in translation moments I've seen in an Anime, a dumb "acting" choice ruins a character.
Characters - 1/10
If you decided to watch this on it's own you'd be almost at a loss for what's going on. Besides a tiny bit of back story on Ayato and Hauka, there is absolutely no information given on any of the characters. At times characters just pop up, since their scenes are taken from the series and thrown into important situations without any explanation. Torigai one second is on the train with Ayato and Hiroko, some scenes pass and he's guarding Ayato's house, then all of a sudden he's controlling a Dolem, if you didn't learn the story from the series it would all seem like gibberish.
They also decided to take out, or lessen, some of the more interesting characters from the series. Kisaragi is nothing more than a chaperone to Quon's sleeping corpse. Isshiki turns up and acts like a psychopath as he leads the attack on Tokyo Jupiter, but you wouldn't know why. Watari is no where to be seen, Elvy comes in for one battle, though you don't know why, and is then gone, and Uncle Rikudo, Yakuma, Bahbem and Megumi are all after thoughts used for a few seconds of story line.
Overall - 2/10
I tried to come at the movie with fresh eyes, thinking it could be seen as a stand alone movie with a different telling of the story, but it just can't be done. If you watched the movie alone you would be more confused than if you watched only the series. They jump around so much that nothing actually connects together, it just seems like random ideas thrown at a wall.
Watching it as someone who previously watched the series it's not so much confusing as it is just terrible. The changes make little sense and the simplification of the the story makes you feel like an imbecile. They went from giving you most of the answers, if you did some thinking, in the series, to just writing it all out for you.
While I wasn't a huge fan of the series, I thought it had many good points and just needed some work, a few characters developed more here and there and it would have been a show with the potential to watch again, I can say I'm less of a fan of the film, hell I'm more of a fan of food poisoning than I am of the movie.
Save yourself your time, watch the series and read a FAQ on it if you're confused, just stay away from this.