There was a storyline? I must have missed that among all the ass-kicking and sweet effects. Honestly, in terms of coming up with stories (for movies and animes, not necessarily for video games), I don't really give the Japanese much credit. I take everything with a grain of salt, because their culture is vastly different from ours, and as anyone who has been to Japan will tell you, Japanese TV is terrible. This is a generalization, of course; there are animes, movies, etc. out there, made in Japan, with good plots, but I simply don't put as much weight on it when I'm watching something that's been brought over from Japan and subbed, because it's not going to cater to my westernized tastes.

Being emo is popular in Japan. All of the cool characters do it. Cloud does it, and they love him for it. Sasuke (from Naruto) does it, and he's the most popular character in the series. Katsushirou (Samurai 7) did it, and he has girls falling all over him in the anime. Being emo isn't nearly as well-received in the Americas. Their plots are structured differently as well, and so we might not find them to be spectacular.

Really, I just enjoyed the movie because it made the characters I loved from FFVII come to life as impressively-rendered figures to do a bunch of totally awesome fighting.