(Today’s guest review comes from local blogger and paranormal expert Michael Banti. Be sure to catch his blog Weird Fresno for the latest on scary shit around the area. If you are interested in being a future guest reviewer, drop us an email at info@dumbdrum.com and we’ll chat.)
I feel the need to preface that this is my first official movie review and I may not possess the necessary skills to properly review a major motion picture. But the fact that the director/producer/writer M. Night Shyamalan has none of the skills in his title, cancels out my lack of skills and therefore justifies this review.
Before I continue, let me say this: I never saw any of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” before I heard of this movie. I knew it to be a popular cartoon, but I’ve never really been interested. But when this movie came out, I decided to check out the cartoon to see what it was about. Surprisingly, I found myself rather liking the few episodes that I saw and liked both the humor and the heart of the series. Sadly none of this transferred over to the movie. The acting was so wooden it made Hayden Christensen’s love scenes in “Attack of the Clones” look like Clark Gable’s from “Gone with the Wind”. The actor who plays Aang, Noah Ringer, is so wooden and stiff when he delivers his dialog that even the shitty CGI’d flying bison feels more real. There was also supposed to be a love scene between two of the characters late in the movie, but the only way I knew of this was because of a damn voiceover (one of like forty three I think). The two had as about as much chemistry as when you mix dirt with water. Though there was one actor who somehow did a good job with the crap that was given to him: Shaun Toub, who’s most famous role to date was that of Yinsen in “Iron Man”. Somehow Toub adds humanity and depth to his character when the others didn’t. If anything this shows how good of an actor he is. Even though he was playing a villain of sorts, I actually found myself liking the character.
Speaking of CGI, it is so damn awful it looks like someone running a Pentium 333 MHz processor did the animation. At some points the effects were so bad that they were blurry where the rest of the non CGI’d scene was fine. Turns out there is a reason why, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Another thing that annoyed me was the fight scenes. They were done poorly and were the typical group of many standing around as the hero fights one at a time. If they had just bummed rushed the kid the movie would have lasted maybe 30 minutes and the mess would’ve been over. But no, I had to sit through nearly two hours of drivel. I also felt they were shot rather poorly. The last fight was particularly annoying. Aang would enter the fight, start some air bending ass kicking moves and the camera would zoom in on him. As soon as he was done, the camera would zoom back out only to start all over again. Oh did I mention this was done in slow motion? So you can imagine the headache I got (well the headache also was the result of shitty acting, bad dialog, and a plot only comprehensible if you smoked a bunch of angel dust). There are so many faults with this movie, that I’m afraid I’d burn my keyboard out before I was done.
Nothing in this movie was redeemable. The fact that the main child actors, who are of Asian decent in the cartoon, are portrayed by Caucasian children is just awful, yet most of the secondary characters (and the main antagonist) are of some sort of Asian decent. Why do directors always feel the need to do that? It alienates the core fans and turns into negative publicity (and like I said, the kid who played Aang was just awful). In the series he’s a fun loving twelve year old, but knows he’s the avatar. In the movie he’s so damn stiff that I can’t tell if he’s constipated or if he’s just scared shitless that this movie is going to suck more than Shyamalan’s last flick “The Happening”. Well guess what kid? It does and you had a hand in it.
Overall this movie was a steaming turd. I’d imagine that kids would probably like it, but then most kids like Justin Bieber, so that should say it all. There is no reason to see it. Even if you do like bad movies like I do, this isn’t one that’s even fun to give the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment to. One can only imagine how awful this was in 3D. Oh speaking of 3D, remember how I stated earlier that some of the CGI was blurry? Turns out this movie was the 3D version, even though my ticket didn’t state that and I was never given 3D glasses. I didn’t even know this until as I was walking out I saw a couple tossing their 3D glasses away. I asked them where they got them and they said the ticket taker gave them to them. Yeah turns out my ticket taker didn’t give me mine, must have been busy telling people to go left or right. What really cracks me up is the fact that I was watching a 3D movie and didn’t even realize it except for a few blurry CGI effects. And Hollywood feels they can charge more for this? Yeah I don’t think so.
Seriously, don’t see this movie. It’s not worth it and the only thing it proves is that M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t directed a good movie since “Unbreakable”. Given the huge failure of his last two movies, “Lady in the Water” and “The Happening”, one has to wonder what the hell the studio exes were on when they hired them (probably the angel dust that allows you to understand the plot). “The Last Airbender” was supposed to be a trilogy, but given the overall negative reviews I highly doubt it. And it’s sad that a really good animated series was turned into the steaming turd that was “The Last Airbender”. On a scale of one to ten, I give it a negative one hundred. It’s that bad.
Well unfortunately I am going to have to disagree with this guy. We have watched the Avatar since it first came out on Nickelodeon and we were very excited to see that there was a movie being made. We heard about the negative reviews but then we began to think who are these guys making the reviews and have they watched the cartooon? Do they have kids? Why did they go see the movie? Then I thought well probably so they can write a review but they were probably going with the thought that this movie is gonna suck before they even got to the theater especially since many people feel that this director has not done a good job previously. Now if u want a real review ask the children that this movie was made for not an adult that is over analyzing every part of the movie. My children as well as myself gave it an A+ and we cant wait for the next one. It was exciting and entertaining the kids were on the edge of their seats the whole time. Yes, there were a few major parts in the cartoon that were left out but hey we cant have a 5 hr movie. As for the characters I do agree with u there. They could have found some kids with a more native feel and look. Over all this movie was great and entertaining exactly what is was supposed to be and as for all the crap he said so we really go to the movies and pay attention to the voice overs and the slow mo and the lighting??? So i say this go see it for yourself and make your own judgement!!!