Chelsey's Movie Review: Avatar **

As I mentioned in my Snow Day post, we braved the weather to see James Cameron's Avatar. Bryan's review covered all the major plot points, so I'll skip all of that and get straight to what I liked and disliked without having to give you too much background. (Thanks, Bryan.)

First: what I liked. The movie looked really cool. It still seemed a tiny bit cartoony to me, but that's probably because I've never seen a giant blue person with a tail in real life. They managed to integrate the animated stuff with the real stuff pretty seamlessly. Thankfully, we have come a long way since the days of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Another thing I liked was the attention to detail. Not only does the movie take place in a new and distant world, it thoroughly and completely illustrates that world without seeming overbearing. The plants, animals, landscape, and overall atmosphere are presented beautifully. Some movies try too hard to create a "new world" by giving too much explanation. For example, on Pandora, the air is not breathable by humans. Some movies would take that point a few steps too far -- explaining what is different about the air on a molecular level or something like that, which isn't critical to the plot and doesn't make it more interesting that the air isn't breathable. This movie didn't do that. Everyone had to wear masks, and if they didn't, they croaked. Simple, plausible, and not detracting from the movie.

And now, what I disliked. At 160 minutes, the movie was simply too long. You should know that I am not as enamored of the 3-D IMAX experience as Bryan and most men seem to be. The 3-D glasses never fit me right (blame it on my unusually small nose), and the word "IMAX" to me just means "bigger and louder." So I fully admit that at least part of my irritation at the length of the movie was due to my discomfort. But seriously, it could have easily been done in two hours.

Another thing I disliked was the ridiculous points in the dialogue that seemed to be the result of some of the writers saying, "I don't know if it's obvious enough that there is an anti-war message to this movie. We'd better make it clearer." For example, one of the humans' big attacks on the Nav'i is described as "shock and awe." We get it, people. You hate George Bush and you think the Iraq war was about oil. We would have understood that without the "shock and awe" reference, so please don't insult our intelligence anymore.

The dialogue in general was pretty clunky, and the characters were far too stereotypical for me. Sigourney Weaver plays the environmentally conscious biologist who desperately tries to convince Giovanni Ribisi, the money-grubbing native-hating executive, that the ecosystem on Pandora is more complex and wonderful than he could possibly understand, and he should reconsider digging it all up to mine unobtanium. I understand that the point of the movie is how it looks, so the actual plot is more of an afterthought. But there were several points that were downright laughable.

Overall, I didn't hate it. Was it worth braving the blizzard conditions on Saturday, a storm that dropped the most snow DC has had in December in 70 years? Hardly. Is it worth seeing under different circumstances, yeah, probably.