1. Great character design / dressing, great background scene. Lots of effort put into this.
2. Strange quiet scenes and lack of interesting or funny dialogues does make it cheap. I don't know if it's just me but the comic timing is painful - it's like a friend who insist on telling a joke without a buildup and just force it on everyone during a gathering. The quietness does not help.
3. Lack of character buildup: I sincerely hope Japanese Anime Live action Directors will one day realize that the character buildup in Anime is what makes the audiences fall in love so hard with the characters and create that powerful connection with the show.
4. Bad acting: the lack of character buildup is exacerbated by overacting/anime type expressions by Edward, Winry and the side characters. Roy Mustang is just wrong - his character in the anime is someone who is confident and smug which suggest he's never had to worked too hard to get to where he is because of background, his genius or whatever. His complexion is fair which is suppose to symbolise the opposite of Scar, who grew up in hardship. He also has the easiest move to create transmutation to emphasize that "not having to try too hard". In the live action, the actor has a fake tan.... and he looks stressed out / constipated in every of his dialogue. Louis Armstrong is just disappointing.... I really doubt the anime Armstrong would be proud of that body......... I don't think you can lay the blame on the actors, but I think the people in charge of the casting, should have done more research and understood what makes the characters awesome to the audience. For example, Alice in Borderland did a great job with both casting and character buildup.
