How to guard against the dinosaur's big teeth in 3-D

Rating: 2/10 (18 December 2009)

Having liked "Titanic," I walked in to an IMAX theater to see "Avatar" hoping James Cameron will show us what a real feature-film director can do with 3-D technology, as opposed to all those documentary film makers having big fish swimming in water or having dinosaurs making little children cry by baring their plentiful sharp teeth at them. When, at show's end I walked out of the IMAX, I had the bad feeling that either 3-D may not be good for anything more than having teethy dinosaurs scare the daylights out of the kiddies, or a more talented director is needed to heed the third dimension's call.
Beyond its dinosaurs and colorful jumbo-birds, this movie has not much more to offer. Some may say that the floating rocks are an imaginative idea, but that idea has already been thought up half a century ago by the great Belgian painter René Magritte in his very famous "Le Château des Pyrénées." There can be no doubt that James Cameron is familiar with this painting, since his floating rocks happen to have the same shape as Magritte's, the only difference being that Magritte's rock is barren and supports a castle, whereas the "Avatar" rocks are covered with vegetation, and the folks living around them have yet to come up with the idea of a building.
There are chase scenes galore in this film, and the kiddies will be frightened, alright. Given all the "Star Wars" paraphernalia on show in "Avatar" a more appropriate title would have been "Tree Wars." But then "Star Wars" had a marvelous sense of humor, which is totally lacking in "Avatar." After a little theological editing, its silly politics could make "Avatar" a hit among believers in a great Satan.