- 23,800
- Philippines
I knew it was going to be bad. Any movie that has a Tomato-meter rating of 8% is bound to be bad. (and those 8% positive reviews gave the movie a break because it was "for kids" )
But we're fans of the cartoon, so we HAD to watch it.
Yeah. My wife and I love the cartoon. We're in our mid-30s. She doesn't particularly like Kung-Fu movies, or cartoons in general... and I initially thought the Avatar cartoons were just kid's stuff. But halfway into Season 1, I was hooked. By Season 3, I had her sitting up with me watching all of the old episodes in all-night marathons.
The cartoon is humorous, wittily-written, action packed, with authentic kung-fu, an interesting background story (if a bit simplified for the sake of the target audience), and with incredibly lavish and detailed set-pieces, characters, props and special effects for a TV cartoon series.
The movie?
I've watched some stinkers. White Chicks. The Legend of Chun Li. 2Fast 2Furious. And this, hands down, has the worst dialogue of any movie I've ever watched. I couldn't believe my ears until I saw, in the final credits, that Shymalan had also written this stinker.
The acting is horrible. Not just the acting itself... and it's probably unfair to the actors... but the faces and expressions Shymalan has his actors make are at times wholly inappropriate. There's a near complete lack of humor in the movie. So much so that when a joke actually occurs, the audience in the theater let out a reflexive laugh... happy for some release from the tedium.
You'd think the martial arts and SFX would make up for it. And, admittedly, the martial arts are good and the SFX are terrific. But it's hard to appreciate the majesty and scale of some of the set pieces when the camera is stuck five inches from an actor's face, or pinned to the ground at an awkward angle, yards away from the action that is happening (which, in big set pieces, involves a large number of actors flailing their arms at each other like ia 70's Kung-Fu B-flick). Only rarely does Shymalan play with the camera work, showing some flashes of brilliance in some of the battle scenes and slow-mos.
Did I say brilliance? Maybe a more apt term is competent. Because anything can look incredible when set against the incredible boredom and drudgery of listening to nearly two hours of straight plot exposition that read like a Cliff's Notes of Avatar: Season One.
If they don't revoke Shymalan's directing license for this, I'll have lost all faith in humanity.
Unfortunately for us... since Shymalan also produced this horrid mess... odds are, we'll see a sequel.
Avoid. Avoid like the plague. Better yet: pick up a DVD-copy of Season 3 Episode 17: "The Ember Island Players". This lighthearted spoof of the entire story arc of Avatar, told from the point of view of a frustrated cabbage vendor via an incredibly bad troupe of stage actors is ten times more watchable than this movie.
But we're fans of the cartoon, so we HAD to watch it.
Yeah. My wife and I love the cartoon. We're in our mid-30s. She doesn't particularly like Kung-Fu movies, or cartoons in general... and I initially thought the Avatar cartoons were just kid's stuff. But halfway into Season 1, I was hooked. By Season 3, I had her sitting up with me watching all of the old episodes in all-night marathons.
The cartoon is humorous, wittily-written, action packed, with authentic kung-fu, an interesting background story (if a bit simplified for the sake of the target audience), and with incredibly lavish and detailed set-pieces, characters, props and special effects for a TV cartoon series.
The movie?
I've watched some stinkers. White Chicks. The Legend of Chun Li. 2Fast 2Furious. And this, hands down, has the worst dialogue of any movie I've ever watched. I couldn't believe my ears until I saw, in the final credits, that Shymalan had also written this stinker.
The acting is horrible. Not just the acting itself... and it's probably unfair to the actors... but the faces and expressions Shymalan has his actors make are at times wholly inappropriate. There's a near complete lack of humor in the movie. So much so that when a joke actually occurs, the audience in the theater let out a reflexive laugh... happy for some release from the tedium.
You'd think the martial arts and SFX would make up for it. And, admittedly, the martial arts are good and the SFX are terrific. But it's hard to appreciate the majesty and scale of some of the set pieces when the camera is stuck five inches from an actor's face, or pinned to the ground at an awkward angle, yards away from the action that is happening (which, in big set pieces, involves a large number of actors flailing their arms at each other like ia 70's Kung-Fu B-flick). Only rarely does Shymalan play with the camera work, showing some flashes of brilliance in some of the battle scenes and slow-mos.
Did I say brilliance? Maybe a more apt term is competent. Because anything can look incredible when set against the incredible boredom and drudgery of listening to nearly two hours of straight plot exposition that read like a Cliff's Notes of Avatar: Season One.
If they don't revoke Shymalan's directing license for this, I'll have lost all faith in humanity.
Unfortunately for us... since Shymalan also produced this horrid mess... odds are, we'll see a sequel.
Avoid. Avoid like the plague. Better yet: pick up a DVD-copy of Season 3 Episode 17: "The Ember Island Players". This lighthearted spoof of the entire story arc of Avatar, told from the point of view of a frustrated cabbage vendor via an incredibly bad troupe of stage actors is ten times more watchable than this movie.
