Cameron's latest really good but not 'Avatar'iffic

Rating: 8/10 (31 December 2009)

For a quarter-of-a-billion dollars, the viewer (not to mention the studio) ought to get an amazing movie. Avatar is a really, really fine film with THE best special effects ever. In that sense, it's Avatariffic. The risks for uber-director James Cameron were incredibly high. He passed the test easily but didn't knock your socks off. The fact that Cameron invented a language for the Na'vi, the inhabitants of Pandora, is meaningless to me but only relevant to budding cultists just like Trekkers bask in Klongonistics.
While the film soars in effects, it is merely mainstream in plot. At its heart, Avatar is a love story and a war movie. It most resembles Star Wars but with super-sized graphics and characters that are mostly computerized. The humans, led by paraplegic Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, Cameron's star in Aliens), are compelling characters as real people trying to infiltrate the Na'vi and convince them to move in order to allow their unnamed "corporation" to mine "unobtainium" (really?), a precious natural resource desperately needed on Earth. Of course, as Jake becomes one of the Na'vi, he is captivated by their people and their culture, deciding in the process to scuttle the plans of his corporation. But the "corporation" (or is it 'The Force"?) is determined to get the unobtainium (the audience is never told why Earth needs it or what it does). That means we need a bad guy. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is the leader of the military whose job it is to decimate the sacred land and mine the unobtainium. The character and Lang's portrayal of Quaritch (or is it Darth Vader?) are one dimensional; he is all evil. The rest of the film is technological triumph and typical war movie of the all-powerful invader against the little people.
At 2 hours and 42 minutes, the film is too long but I was only bored early in the movie as Cameron felt compelled to painstakingly introduce us to the new world. Once the action began in the Second Act, the movie was exciting, compelling and engaging. I saw Avatar in 3-D, which is really the only way to see it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cameron did not overdo the 3-D; it truly enhanced the film. A certain Best Picture nominee, we'll see if Cameron gets to claim he's "king of the world" again.