Total immersion

Rating: 9/10 (10 January 2010)

Yes, the storyline is familiar. And there's not much subtlety in the delivery of its message. And, yes, the dialog sometimes gets a little corny.
But ...
This was the first film in many years which I didn't feel I was just watching. Somehow, I could almost feel that I was on the planet, Pandora.
The CGI effects were quite brilliant, and the 3D was, for the most part, very, very good. Pandora was so well realized that I left behind all sense of watching an artificial world. The Hometree, all the other flora and fauna, some beautiful, some grotesque, some very frightening indeed. At one stage, I wanted to reach out and touch the floating jellyfish-like spores, they were so real. And that, I think, sums up what Avatar provides: a total immersion experience light years beyond anything I've had in a cinema for a long, long time.
mjf-412