Visually Stunning But Narratively Flawed

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2010)

The film is worth seeing, I'll give you that. I recommend seeing it in 3D but not in IMAX, as I did, as I thought it was not worth the extra cost. My biggest problem with the film was it's writing and pacing, both of which take away from its full impact by taking us out of the lush visual story world that Cameron has created. At it's nearly 3 hour length, the film runs too long, and is overly dependent on visuals for visuals sake. In the writing department, the omnipresent narration by Sam Worthington's character not only does not make sense with in it's own framing device, but drags the film down by over explaining, redundant expository dialog and a condescending inability to allow the actors and the audience to understand the moments by visual and dramatic storytelling rather than let Cameron simply tell us.
Even though I found many of the characters archetypal and simplistic, the plot often stretched and full of holes, and the dialog often clichéd and/or lazy; I would give the film an 8/10 instead of a 6/10 if the two aforementioned issues of length and narration were addressed. It could have been even better with some stronger rewriting and honing. I would still say this film is worth seeing in theaters, because all of its value lays in its immersive 3D world which, due to the restraints of home video and theater technology, will simply not translate to home viewing. In the end, Avatar is a visually stunning, well acted tech demo with an excellent film trapped inside, unfortunately defeated due to its director's decidedly singular focus on visual splendor. It is not bad, and you will probably enjoy it far more than I did, but I personally am disappointed, because it could have been exceptional if the team behind it put half the effort in to the story that they put into the setting.