nwhiker | Movie review: Avatar (Reply)

Finally a review of Avatar. Perry, AC, dh, and I saw it last Monday in Baton Rouge.

Summary: dumb and beautiful.

It was awful. Fun, yes, but awful nonetheless.

The imagery was just flat out incredible. Beautifully done, an enchanted light-and-iridescence filled environment. The computer graphics work was mind boggling, the flying scenes spectacular and avatars and aliens are realistic.

That's the good part.

The bad part?

Boring! But fun.

It was a cotton candy kinda film: nothing real to it, nothing deep or substantial, just a pure good time. You won't think about it afterwards. I enjoyed it when I was in the theatre, but... less than a week later, I don't think I've thought about it more than twice, and then only because of some Happy Meal toys Linnea has. I picked one of them up this morning, which reminded me that I wanted to write a review.

Once again... they spent so much on the visuals that they forgot a plot.

Wait, that's not really fair. They did have a message, they hit you over the head with it several times... more than several times. Just in case you missed it the first five or six. That I agree with the message is incidental, btw. It was hammered home over and over, and just made me roll my eyes by the end. The big bad imperialists against the gentle savages. Hurl. It was predictable, on just about every point. My only surprise is that one of the "dead for sure" characters actually survived. (Norm, for the record).

What will be interesting, I think, will be the "Making of Avatar", with the cgi details etc. I'm looking forward to that.

Thomas Kincaid made movie, in some ways. Syrupy sweet but totally non-toxic. It might send you into diabetic coma (as Thomas Kincaid does to many of us), but if your pancreas can take it, you'll survive.