The Last Airbender (PG.)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Starring Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Cliff Curtis. 103 mins.
Bending air: it just doesn’t excite people. You wouldn’t cross the road to see it. I’m reminded of the line by the US comic Steven Wright, “I can levitate birds, but nobody cares.”
A whole review could be done just on how bad the title is. Americans don’t have the double meaning of bender so over there lines like “when did you discover you were a bender, boy?” don’t provoke the sniggering they did here in a room full of supposedly grown up reviewers. We should know better but the more they say it the funnier it becomes. You’d have to be a humourless dullard of M. Night proportions not to laugh.
Around the release of Inception there was a spurious debate about whether director Christopher Nolan was the Next Kubrick. Of course he isn’t but with the way he is able to stick to a winning formula but springs enough variations to keep it interesting he is perhaps the M. Night Shyamalan who didn’t mess up.
You may not have bought into The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs but it would be hard to knock Shyamalan’s skill in finding new angles on old genres and to generate nail biting tension from very little. Even The Village had its merits but after that what a falling off there was with The Lady in the Water and The Happening. This is a big departure from his usual: a fantasy adventure aimed at children based on a popular cartoon series called, rather inopportunely, Avatar - The Last Airbender.
The story is an odd cross between Kundun and The Golden Compass. Set on a version of the Earth where humanity is divided into four tribes - earth, air, fire and water - the Avatar is a kick ass boy Dalai Lama who once held the balance between the four elements. But he disappeared 100 years before leaving the evil Firebenders to govern the planet with their big machines.
Fortunately the avatar is rediscovered and begins to travel the earth accompanied by the children of unending exposition meeting the poor villagers of unending exposition and being menaced by the baddies of unending exposition.
So much plot, so little story. The original cartoon series, which this is reportedly a complete travesty of, is American but in the style of an anime and, as is often the way with anime serials, the plot just seems to be a never ending succession of diversions and digressions going nowhere. (This is the projected first part of a trilogy so it ends on a Possibly To Be Continued.)
Normally in a film with this much eastern mysticism there would at least be the consolation of someone getting a right good kicking. Here the only action is courtesy of Bending a magical power granted to the few which is basically doing a bit of tai chi to summon up a special effect.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Starring Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Cliff Curtis. 103 mins.
Bending air: it just doesn’t excite people. You wouldn’t cross the road to see it. I’m reminded of the line by the US comic Steven Wright, “I can levitate birds, but nobody cares.”
A whole review could be done just on how bad the title is. Americans don’t have the double meaning of bender so over there lines like “when did you discover you were a bender, boy?” don’t provoke the sniggering they did here in a room full of supposedly grown up reviewers. We should know better but the more they say it the funnier it becomes. You’d have to be a humourless dullard of M. Night proportions not to laugh.
Around the release of Inception there was a spurious debate about whether director Christopher Nolan was the Next Kubrick. Of course he isn’t but with the way he is able to stick to a winning formula but springs enough variations to keep it interesting he is perhaps the M. Night Shyamalan who didn’t mess up.
You may not have bought into The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs but it would be hard to knock Shyamalan’s skill in finding new angles on old genres and to generate nail biting tension from very little. Even The Village had its merits but after that what a falling off there was with The Lady in the Water and The Happening. This is a big departure from his usual: a fantasy adventure aimed at children based on a popular cartoon series called, rather inopportunely, Avatar - The Last Airbender.
The story is an odd cross between Kundun and The Golden Compass. Set on a version of the Earth where humanity is divided into four tribes - earth, air, fire and water - the Avatar is a kick ass boy Dalai Lama who once held the balance between the four elements. But he disappeared 100 years before leaving the evil Firebenders to govern the planet with their big machines.
Fortunately the avatar is rediscovered and begins to travel the earth accompanied by the children of unending exposition meeting the poor villagers of unending exposition and being menaced by the baddies of unending exposition.
So much plot, so little story. The original cartoon series, which this is reportedly a complete travesty of, is American but in the style of an anime and, as is often the way with anime serials, the plot just seems to be a never ending succession of diversions and digressions going nowhere. (This is the projected first part of a trilogy so it ends on a Possibly To Be Continued.)
Normally in a film with this much eastern mysticism there would at least be the consolation of someone getting a right good kicking. Here the only action is courtesy of Bending a magical power granted to the few which is basically doing a bit of tai chi to summon up a special effect.
