This one is, so far, the closest to what I've been hoping for out of these Naruto movies. It spent a lot more time with the side cast and actually tried developing some ideas from the show, particularly the bells lession from very early in the show. I liked how much time it spent in the Leaf Village proper and how the main emotional conflicts rise from the characters we know instead of randos from the other movies' escort missions. The scene where Sakura broke Naruto out of jail was great, and there were a bunch of other good individual scenes, too.
But the story itself is just not good. There was no reason to connect the original baddy to so many sets of characters. His design is bad. His gimmick is probably the least interesting of all the movie villains thus far. The tiff with the sand village was contrived. They title dropped the movie like infinitely many times. The second act and especially the third act dragged on so much that you could feel the story's potential drying up the entire time.
Signing off with a gay joke was wild as hell in a bad way and I would not recommend it.
