The Last Airbender

Fantasy, Drama
3 stars
Good news and bad news. The bad? Stiff acting, lame dialogue and poor direction mire this film. However, I give an A+ to the imagination, creativity, stage set design, and the interesting concept. If only M. Night Shyamalan could realize his limitations and have used another screen writer to help with the dialogue and then hired a talented director this could have been a really great film. The story takes place in another world where people are able to manipulate or “bend” the four elements and the fire-benders decide they want to conquer the earth, air, and water-benders. The title character is a rare avatar who can bend all four elements and is therefore very powerful so the fire-benders want to control him. I kept wondering all along when the evil fire-benders came by a fleet of ships to attack the water-benders why didn’t it occur to the water-benders that the ships are on, um, water, and why didn’t they shake the seas and sink the ships? No, it took a spirit dragon to point this out after many lives were lost. Silly. Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) stars as a fire-bender and newcomer Noah Ringer plays the title character. It’s a decent story (left wide open for a sequel) and I liked the multinational cast and the cool special effects, but yeah, the acting and dialogue are pretty lame.