Movie Review: AVATAR

So, it seems i'm commissed to write a movie review about Avatar.

And by "commissioned", i mean, "nagged".

Naturally going into this movie I was pretty biased. I can't stand Sam Worthington. It's like he's supposed to be hot but he's not. Zoe Seldana is okay, but she was much too thin to ever play Uhura in Star Trek. So really, my love extended only for her royal fierceness, Sigourney Weaver.
who is supposed to be hosting SNL...yeah!

So the only reason I agreed to see it is 'cause everyone kept insisting that you haveto see it on IMAX, and since my living room doesn't support IMAX format, i was forced to see it on the big screen while I could. Normally I'm all for seeing stuff on DVD because I hate people and movie theaters are full of them.

Much thanks to Lacy and Chris for getting our tix and for waiting in line. Four weeks after opening weekend and there was still a line all the way around the Spectrum on a Monday night.

There's not really a whole lot I can give away since the concepts have been done a billion times before:
- dude with a chip on his shoulder becomes the hero
- government and the military = bad
- every military operation is lead by some square-jawned Texan who loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Who is also always lives while the peons and movie extras die.
- tough-as-nails president/leader/chief's daughter softens up over time
- the one untameable (non-tameable? Something that cannot be tamed) car/plane/dinosaur is the one thing that the hero must do to prove his worth. Very reminiscent of Top Gun...Tom Cruise and his MiGs.

So you've got Jake Sully, a dude in a wheelchair who's PhD twin dies but since they spent a crapload of money creating an Avatar for his brother,they figure they can use him 'cause his DNA is the same. The concept of an Avatar is the same as your Yahoo Avatar....it's you in photoshop or CG format. You sleep in this jelly-filled pod, and your robot-CG guy goes out and fakes it in the world of real things that look like your Avatar. Both can't be awake at the same time.

Jake is supposed to be protecting Sigourney Weaver, a chain-smoking scientist. Secretly he's giving info to the Big Bad Military, 'cause the Smurfs live on an area with expensive smurfberries. The plan is that in 3 months he'll get in good with the Smurfs and figure out how to get them to get them to trade stuff for their smurfberries.

Yep. That's right. Nicolas Cage was a smurf in Avatar. Did you not see him? Pic courtesy of http://niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com.

After much glow-in-the-dark fun with Smurfette, Jake ends up becoming one of "them". And "they" don't want anything us normal humans have to trade for their smurfberries. Jake even ends up getting his smurf mating on with Smurfette. Everything seems to work by a pony tail in your hair, which I dont' see how that works 'cause Smurfette's hair was in thin dreadlocks the whole movie but when necessary she pulled out the massive ponytail with wiggly tails coming out of it. You need a ride on a bird? Plug in your ponytail. Need to talk to a tree? Hook up your ponytail. Need to talk to the earth? Sit with your ponytail on the ground and start moving around like you're doing abdominal exercises at 24 Hour Fitness. So i'm pretty sure in order to bond for life there was some ponytail-on-ponytail action between Smurfette and Jake, but they didn't show that for PG-13 reasons.

Eventually sh*t hits the fans 'cause the military and government folk want their smurfberries asap, Jake begs for just another hour to warn the Smurfs.

Chaos ensues. Good times.

The key thing is that this was in 3D, which was definitely pretty cool minus the bizarre glasses you have to wear. They're not even really "glasses" as much as 2 big trapezoids attached to a tight uncomfortable wraparound stick. When i last checked, sunglasses were supposed to fit around your ears. And be comfortable. I think they make the first 30 mins "uber 3D" and the rest of the movie "low budget 3D", since by the end of it you're not really paying attention to the 3D factor by the end of it.

I wouldn't see it again, I found myself getting really angry at the bad guys and i doubt it would have anywhere near the same wow-factor the 2nd time around. So...go see it in IMAX, or do don't see it at all.

There. That's my Avatar wrap-up without any editing or thought.