'I Would Try Harder To Make A Better Headline For My LAST AIRBENDER Review If The Movie Was Any Good', Says The Enemy…

Hey there, people... As you can tell from my headline, M. Night Shyamalan's new take on Nickelodeon's hit series Avatar: The Last Airbender won't make two billion dollars at the box office, or win any golden statues. Like Toy Story, I spent a considerable portion of my childhood with this cartoon. I grew up with it, and this rendition is far from a respectable live-action version of the show. To be completely honest, I haven't enjoyed much of M. Night's work - with the exception of The Sixth Sense, and his screenplay for Rob Minkoff's Stuart Little. Other movies, like Signs, Lady in the Water, and The Happening (Marky Mark!) have left me wondering why he continues to make movies at all. The effort towards acting and story telling he puts into everything he makes is completely ridiculous. Sometimes it feels like he's not talking his own work seriously. Or, maybe he's taking it too seriously. Either way, there's no balance. And still, he gets assigned to The Last Airbender? I will say that some parts of the film show flashes of directorial maturity (a nice scene between a badguy and his uncle explaining the badguy's motivations, an awkward first conversation between a dull hero dude and his hot, white-haired girlfriend), but the rest of it ends up being what we've come to expect from a "normal" M. Night movie. The film is unsteady and unsure of itself, and it doesn't feel like anyone on screen believes in what they are doing for one moment. Anyone who actually watched the TV show will find this a pretty huge buzz kill. Some stuff works OK; the photography (by Lord of the Rings' Andrew Lesnie) is well handled during sweeping landscape shots and intense action sequences. But much of his material is compromised by 3D - like many films these days, it suffers from what I call "COTT Syndrome" (Clash of the Titans), where 3D doesn't enhance our viewing of the movie, but negatively affects the experience of the movie as a whole. Airbender's 3D results in a noticeably darker image when viewed through 3D glasses - our projection wasn't bright enough to compensate for the goggles' "sunglasses effect". As a result, even bright, sunny snowscapes look like they're being viewed on a muted, overcast day. This happened in a decent theater in Austin, it'll presumably happen in other cities, too. Unfortunately, 3D is only a small part of why this movie doesn't work. Airbender is a streamlined version of the first full season of the show. It covers the basic, 'important' events of season one, while skipping other parts to segue to the final third of the movie. This results in awkward and rushed pacing, lots of exposition, and makes it nearly impossible to connect with any characters. Airbender feels a confused child trying to figure out who/what it's trying to be. Occasionally it will find its footing, then looses it quickly and stumble completely. The acting by all cast members, as well as the overall ambiance of the film, feels pretty crappy. Only a small handful of scenes were even half-way believable, and the actors themselves seemed like they were hand picked from a SyFy TV project. I'm talking Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus SyFy, not the Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe, or Doctor Who SyFy. The actors' major lack of investment makes M. Night's retarded script feel more jagged and stilted than it already is. And when these people do appear to invest themselves, what they're trying to convey feels awkwardly forced upon the viewer. It's as if they're pressuring us to believe what they're saying. Again, maybe that's because they didn't believe it themselves. I can see that The Last Airbender's dense material is a lot for any actor to juggle, but look at Star Trek - Nimoy and Shatner where able to convey that they cared, and completely sell you on their roles, even with all the craziness going on around them. Yes a majority of these actors are teens, but as a director, M. Night should've been guiding them more, and help them to understand how to connect with his material. Too harsh? See for your self. The moment protagonist Noah Ringer's Aang speaks will seem as if knives are going through you - and memories of Jake Lloyd will quickly spring to mind. Most of the cast if like this, making Airbender an endurance test which quickly becomes unsettling, and will leave you restless in your seat. This begins within the first fifteen minutes and, carries on through the film's flashy end credits. With Airbender, M. Night is essentially copying something that's already made - you'd think this would be a decent film simply because there wasn't much creative inspiration needed to put it on screen. Unfortunately, The Last Airbender is a cinematic date rape. And boy do I feel violated.

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