What if "Titanic" had devoted half its running time to endangered Arctic wildlife? (spoilers?)

Rating: 6/10 (23 December 2012)

Okay, so....there are these people who wear leaves, live in perfect peace and harmony and faith, hope, and charity (I'd be willing to bet that they can sing "Kum-Ba-Yah" nonstop through an entire weekend). And they all live in this happy singing all the day long place which looks like an enormous tropical tree. But then there are rough, bad, mean people who probably don't even know the words to "Kum-Ba-Yah" and have big guns and lots of ugly machinery besides. They want something that can only begotten if that big tropical tree is tipped over in very dramatic fashion. And they're so nasty that they don't have any qualms about "putting down the natives".
Okay, you get it by now, right? You've seen it in plenty of space operas, ecological parables, every movie about colonialism, and who knows where else. So....more or less like a James Bond movie, when you plunk down your money and take your seat, you know exactly what you're going to see even before the lights dim.
And you just might enjoy it. The visual effects are fascinating (even to this viewer who did not see it in 3D), the acting is decent enough if a fair number of the characters are cardboard, and even though it's been done before, it's a worthy story (and probably always will be).
This movie is a great thrill ride. Unfortunately, the preaching tends to get in the way of the ride, and the ride tends to get in the way of the preaching. If "Avatar" could simply make up its mind as to whether it wants to be a just plain cool visual experience or a polemic reaching for every cliché in the book to be a "message movie", it would be a lot more enjoyable to folks who are looking for either. By trying to please both, ultimately, it disappoints all.
James Cameron might have done better to split the budget in half and make two separate movies with it. But....that wouldn't really be his style, would it?