Am I Too Old?

Rating: 2/10 (28 December 2010)

It must be an age thing.
For over forty years I would go to the movies once perhaps twice a week; in the eighties I was seeing over one hundred films a year. Watching movies on TV, video, and even DVD/Blue Ray was no substitute for the cinema experience. But over the last few years, I have left the theatre disappointed so often that I have cut my movie going down to perhaps one picture a month.
And last year out came Avatar. "The most hyped, the most praised, the most successful, the most amazing etc etc" movie experience ever. And I knew it would not be very good. But even on my much reduced movie going schedule I dithered and thought I should really see it. But I didn't and later in the year when it came out on DVD, not buying it was no hardship.
But now Avatar is showing on Sky Movies, in England where I live. So we watched it. I lasted forty five minutes. Not good enough, I thought, certainly if I am going to share my views on IMDb. So I tried again. I have got to about 110 minutes; and that is all I can take.
Let me say right from the outset, I am in awe at the dedication, the skill and the professionalism of all the men and women who produced this film. I assume we are looking at years of the most painstaking and exacting work. But in the end you have to ask, to what effect?
I am not against monster movies, I can appreciate visiting "other worlds". I am a bit of a sci- fi buff and I certainly have had my share of liberal guilt (as befits a product of the sixties!), and, to top it all, I loved The Terminator!!
(I even thought Titanic was pretty fair; although to this day I have hardly met anyone who will actually own up to seeing it; strange for the hitherto biggest grosser of all time!)
But this! A glacial pace (even through the action sequences), a story that would make a Year 3 (2nd Grade) schoolchild's infantile ramblings on "the environment" seem profound and an attempt at polemic that was so dull no sane person could be even able to recall it.
More importantly, the story line, the dialogue, the "acting" (but one could only feel sorry for the actors) were so dull and plodding as to invite sleep. Only Stephen Lang had even the semblance of an actual personality. All in all there seemed to be an almost mathematical correlation between the awesomeness (is that a word?) of the film's effects and the awfulness of the story and dialogue.
Avatar has its critics, I know, some of whom say that the storyline is just a rehash of the Pocahontas story. But really how can they know? Did they manage to stay awake?
Avatar (the first 110 minutes) was totally devoid of any wit (and I am not speaking about comedy laughs). One could feel not the remotest empathy with any of the characters and sometimes I found myself actually closing my eyes in embarrassment at the leadenness of the whole thing. Sometimes with a bad movie one can find refuge in the cliché "so bad it's good" and discover a measure of enjoyment that was not the film maker's intention. But not in this instance; it's just bad.
I'll stop now (and not before time!) , because what is the point of some grumpy old man like me ranting on at what is obviously a "masterpiece"!!! I might as well criticise Barack Obama on The Huffington Post!
But you know, it's not an age thing. Bad is just bad.