A solid movie, but no means a master piece

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2009)

I wont go in the debate about the plot of this movie, nor do I want to blame Cameron from possible idea thefts, as Avatar really is a story, that has been done tens of times since there has been written stories.
The simplistic story is well played, but for such a long movie the characters stay mostly in the level of caricatures, which is a shame, as now good actors like Sigorney Weaver and Stephen Lang are left almost unused background material. Lang especially is such an one dimensional character, that there's no doubt left of his evil nature. There's no gray areas in between, he's just evil.
What I want to say though is, that the movie looks great. Even the Na'vi, which design I'm not that keen about looked mostly very convincing. But because they used so much time in creating the fauna of Pandora I felt that from times I was watching a nature documentary instead of a sci-fi/fantasy flick.
All said, Avatar is not a terrible way to spend a couple of hours. It looks good and moves along pretty well, despite it feels a bit too chopped from here and there.