The Last Airbender

My son has been waiting for months for this movie to come out. For the last two weeks, he's been practicing his element-bending moves in anticipation of an amazing cinematic experience.

I have to say, he was very happy.

My opinion was less enthusiastic. Since it is based on one of my son's favorite cartoons, I am familiar with the storyline. Based on the few episodes I've seen, I thought that this movie had great potential, especially in 3-D.

The first thing I will say is that there was no need for this movie to be in 3-D. The effects were minimal. In fact, at Denny's afterwards, when I said this to my 10-year-old son, his response was "they make everything 3-D now to get people to go, Mom." And that was exactly it. With the manipulation of the elements, this could have been an amazing 3-D experience. It fell quite flat of expectations. Perhaps my glasses were defective.

Actually, flat is the perfect way to describe this movie.

I would love to talk about character development, but there wasn't any. The only attempt that was made for the audience to understand Aang's (the Avatar) emotional state was through ineffective flashbacks. The plot seems to jump around, never allowing the audience a chance to become vested in the characters or the outcome. One simply doesn't care whether the Fire Nation captures Aang or not.

The acting was lackluster at best. I almost dread typing that, because I don't want to be seen as jumping on the "casting boycott" bandwagon. While anyone familiar with the cartoon will raise an eyebrow when Jackson Rathbone (who plays Jasper Hale in the Twilight series, two theaters down) appears as Sokka, had he delivered any type of performance, perhaps the audience would have suspended their ethnicity issues and accepted him in the role.

The next film is well set up in the close of this movie, and I know my son will want to see it. I just hope that Mr. Shyamalan revisits his vision, and perhaps watches a few episodes of the cartoon, before this undertaking.

I wanted my first entry to be an enthusiastic endorsement of a movie. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong time to start. I should have made my premiere entry about The Karate Kid last week (in fact, I will write another about it, go see it!). I can only give The Last Airbender movie 1-1/2 popcorns.