A visually spectacular cartoon aimed at kids and fantasy geeks....unfortunately nothing more

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2009)

Watching this movie is kind of like looking at numerous beautiful paintings. You go "ooohh and ahhhh" at first when you see them, then after a while you get tired of it. This movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes of looking at beautiful paintings, with no emotional attachment to the characters or their conflicts. It just goes on and on forever without any kind of drama, comedy, plot developments, or suspense. This script was written for children approximately 5 to 15 years old. In other words, people who have yet to see a lot of movies in their lives to compare this with. The biggest problem with this is just how much the film talks down to us as an audience, lecturing and preaching to us with regards to things like saving trees and the evils of war-monger Americans. It's OK to bring up some kind of political or environmental issue in a film, but you had better be sure to do it in an intelligent way that allows the audience to think about the issue, rather than just preach to us like we are 6 year olds.
I'm all for good-looking visual effects here and there, but this film was simply too much focus on fantasy and CGI. I personally can't relate to these characters or their world. I'm sorry, but when 10 feet tall blue CGI-animated people are talking to each other and flying through the air on dragons for 2 hours, it feels like you are watching a cartoon! I would have loved them when I was 7, or 9, or even 13, but not as a grown adult. I cannot relate to these creatures, which means I CANNOT CARE ABOUT THEM. I could care about Jack and Rose in Titanic because of the how real they were, and how real the plot and atmosphere was. This movie was complete fantasy, with a plot that was nearly identical to Pocahontas, The Last Samurai, and Dances with Wolves.
The final problem I had with this movie was that the acting from all the principal characters was very flat. The Army Colonel could have been played by anyone, as he was basically just a typical tough guy. He's just your typical villain from 1,000 other action movies, nothing more. Giovanni Ribisi is the best actor in this movie. He seemed to be having some fun in his role as the sleazy corporate executive, and whenever his character was on screen I wanted the scene to continue. However, after the first 45 minutes or so he basically disappears so we can focus on on the blue natives and their visual effects. The talented veteran Sigourney Weaver also gives her all in her small role, but Cameron just doesn't care about her either. He just wants to move the film's pace along so we can keep the kids with the short attention spans focused on the bright colors and dragons! Also, Michelle Rodriguez is treated like nothing more than a pretty face who knows how to wear a push-up bra and fill out a tight white top. I guess Megan Fox wasn't available for this one! Sam Worthington is very dull as Jake, but it's not his fault. Cameron just doesn't let us see Jake as an interesting character. He's just a typical cardboard cutout young action movie star who is physically fit and handsome.
I believe this so-called "revolutinary 3-D film" by James Cameron is really just a ploy by studios to get audiences to start coming to see more films in 3-D just so they can charge you an extra $4 per ticket. We've been seeing more and more films being shown in 3-D over the past year or two, but I sure hope this is simply a fad. I have seen a few films in 3-D so far, and I have to say that the 3-D does not make a film any better. In fact, it may actually make it worse because the depth perception of the visuals distracts you from the acting and the story. Then again, with films like Avatar that may be the point! I will admit that it is fun to see the 3-D effects in the first 15 minutes or so of a film...but then you want to get involved with the story and characters and not be distracted by all these random objects floating in the middle of the screen! I would much rather see an intelligent story by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Prestige, Dark Knight) than another one of these CGI-heavy stinkers aimed at dumb audiences. Then again, some of the biggest box office hits of this year are Avatar, Transformers 2, 2012, Terminator Salvation, etc. Therefore, as long as young and dumb audiences keep shelling out the cash for these, don't expect anything to change...