What a waste...

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2009)

I am not going to give Avatar a star rating: a movie so technically excellent, and so banal in plot, acting and dialogue just cannot be reduced to one, five or ten stars.
Few would argue that the CGI and the relatively restrained use of 3D make this movie a landmark: Cameron's use of computer generated figures and sets in Titanic set a high standard for realism but Avatar takes the technology to a different level: give the film it's due. He resists the temptation to shove the action directly into the audiences' faces to show how impressive 3D can be. The generated forests are, literally, fantastic. The futuristic computer screens and control room sets have been created by people who know how to make these things appear believable. The CGI blue natives are less realistic, but still don't detract from the overall imagery. (One of the ironies of the present generation of CGI is that the closer the characters are to humans the more uncomfortable one is with the depiction - talking rat-chefs and Buzz Lightyears look more natural than computerised Shrek princesses - but that's by the bye.) (Some of the 3D cinematography is less effective than the rest: in particular, rapidly moving objects in the foreground move very jerkily, rather as if shot at such a low frame rate that the persistence of vision cannot blend the motion, and this make one a little vertiginous.) And yet.....
Hundreds of millions have here been expended on the technology, years of work by talented artists and computer programmers have gone into realising the final film, but somewhere along the road - probably from conception - Cameron has lost the plot. And that's the problem - there really *isn't* one, at least not an original, "make you think", plot. It's all been done before.
OK, there are such ironies as the visual 9-11 reference, but the overall sense that I had was of a waste of all that incredible technology. That will become the norm, and will be further improved, but it can only be effective if it is draped around, and complements, original screen writing.
The dialogue is often excruciating in its jingoism. Ms Weaver recites her lines monotonically, as if she's an infant auditioning for the Christmas Nativity play, and the gung-ho military men made me cringe with the clichés and their one dimensional personae. If - and it's big if - this jingoism is intentional and full of hidden meaning, it's a huge mistake. Imagine,if you will, this movie as a DVD on your LCD screen at home, no 3D and without the beautiful landscapes and floating mountains - could you really sit through 2½ hours of facile dialogue without falling asleep? I couldn't.
So: would I pay to see it again? Yes, but not for a while and only in IMAX or big-screen 3D, and mainly to enjoy the scenery. Would I buy the DVD and watch it at home? No: without all that gorgeous scenery and the various CGGI effects I really couldn't be bothered. Will it generate a handful of awards? Very probably, and deservedly so for the imagery. But if Oscars are given for the screenplay or the acting it can only be because of bribery during the voting process.
PS (Edited several days later):
I have been reading many of the other reviews of this film and have to take exception to descriptions of it as "science fiction". It is not - it is "fantasy".
SF - at least in the classical sense - takes a fundamental premise such as time travel or mind control, and builds a logical structure around it. Fantasy has no such limitation: it just keeps inventing more and more impossible layers and asks you to accept them without criticism. And that's the basic problem with Avatar's plotting and screenplay - it has no logical progression, and relies entirely on its admittedly stunning imagery.