Friday, January 1, 2010

Avatar - Movie Review

Avatar (PG-13) 150 minutes B-
Pretty on the outside...

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang and Matt Gerald.

Films like Avatar (Sci-Fi/Adventure) are normally not my cup of tea, yet there's no denying that the film is visually stunning and a landmark in 3-D technology, computer generated animation/live action, etc... But the rest of the film leaves something to be desired.

Several of the characters seemed cheesy (Colonel Miles Quaritch), contrived (Trudy Chacon), uninteresting (all of the "human" characters with the exception of Sigourney Weaver) and I am not alone in feeling this way. Salon.com film critic Stephanie Zacharek called it "clumsy storytelling" with "godawful dialogue", Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News describes the story as "pure cheese", while Scott Tobias of The Onion explains that it's "a weak patchwork" of Cameron's other films.

I know a lot of you have already seen this film and loved it- that's cool. It's by no means a bad film and I recommend seeing it in 3-D. But the script is weak and not worthy of being called "the best film of 2009". Cameron spent a lot of money making this film look amazing, plus a lot of bells and whistles to keep audiences intrigued, however, much of this feels like a mirage - all beauty and not enough substance.

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