Wow, just wow. Is M. Night Shyamalan capable of making a decent, compelling movie anymore? I didn’t like The Sixth Sense, but I appreciate how well made that movie was, and I liked Unbreakable, but after that he hasn’t made a single movie that I’ve liked and in the last few years a movie I could barely sit through. His latest effort The Last Airbender is the first movie I walked out of in a few years. A combination of horrible movie, horrible 3D and bad audience combined to create a truly horrible film going experience. Is it possible to review a movie that I’ve admittedly walked out on? Let’s give it a go.
Let’s start with the 3D.
You know things are bad when the 3D Credits are a blurry, unwatchable mess, but the first 5 minutes actually looked quite beautiful, rich in detail and depth, at first the images didn’t look weirdly out of proportion or small, I was ready to go for this ride, but then the 3D appeared to completely go away. I took the glasses off to check and yep, no 3D for 5 or 8 minutes at a time, then it would randomly come back for a few minutes. After about a 1/2 hour I just got a literal headache watching this, and today’s 3D films, generally, don’t give me headaches – playing some games do, but watching 3D movies, not really. I’m officially on the Ebert bandwagon; I hate 3D movies, especially this latest crop of pointless post-converted 3D movies.
I know a lot of people scoff at the idea of 3D movies where things “fly out” at you, but I’m old school. If I’m going to have to pay a premium price for a dumb gimmick then I want the full gimmick experience. I don’t think today’s 3D films provide an adequate level of immersion to justify the hassle of wearing the glasses. But by god, if you are going to make the movie 3D, then make the ENTIRE movie 3D. Not some weird thing where only 10% of it appears to be in 3D. It looked like someone went through the movie frame by frame and said, “hey, this action sequence would be cool in 3D, while these talky parts, nah…” Does it cost more to post convert an entire movie into 3D vs. certain pieces of it? That’s the only thing that can explain this odd trend in a world where 3D is being added purely for marketing reasons and not creative ones.
Since I walked out on it about 35 minutes into a 90 minute movie, I at the very least came home and watched a couple of episodes of the cartoon this bad movie is based on, let’s hear it for Netflix Instant Watch! I at least understand why this film was made, the cartoon is ok and there’s a real mythology there. Any movie that starts off with a long, 5-minute title sequence that explains the history immediately turns me off. The only movie that does the long title scrawl correctly is Star Wars. But after that, we got yet another 5 minute voice-over repeating the history – get on with it already.
Apparently there are people in this world who are capable of controlling the elements (fire, water, air, land) and there’s one special person an Airbender who is capable of controlling everything. Some disgraced Prince guy Dev Patel (who many will remember from Slum Dog Millionaire) wants to find this Airbender and control him. Why? I don’t know, I walked out after a particularly horrendous speech from Aasif Mandvi. The acting was just horrible, the sets were bland and the cinematography lifeless.
I won’t even get into the obnoxious people I was sitting next to who kept talking, getting up, playing with their cell phones and the little girl who was giving her mother a running commentary throughout the movie. I just had enough. This is the type of movie I generally like so I don’t know how it could have gone so wrong. It’s not even laughably bad, it’s bland, blah, bad. I’ll be fair and won’t give it the F it probably deserves because who knows it may be watchable when it comes to Blu-ray when I won’t have to put up with the crappy 3D and morons in the audience.
Final Grade D
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 06.30.2010