Avatar

Did I mention I finally saw Avatar on Wednesday while sitting at home being sad about having to work second shift and not getting to see my wife and step-kids at all that night?

Yeah. I watched Avatar.

I did not see it in a theater, or in 3D, so I'm sure the effect was greatly lessened but...

Exactly what is it that differentiates Avatar from a cartoon?

Before I start bitching, I have to say that I did in fact enjoy the movie. I liked it. It wasn't that bad. It most definitely was not great, and there were more holes in it than the gopher infested golf course in Caddyshack... but I did enjoy it.

I think the moment when it lost me was when we watched the computer generated hero being chased by a computer generated animal through a computer generated forest... and the scene switched to slow motion. I actually said out loud, "Come on, Cameron!" It was so lame. The computer generated hero and the computer generated monster and the computer generated setting all went into slow motion and did one of those The Matrix style camera moves that were awesome in the first Matrix and then instantly were lame rip off cliches in every other movie that used the same trick... and in this case the whole shebang was computer generated. It was just lame.

I went into the movie knowing that the story was essentially just Dances with Wolves in space. Right. But in Dances with Wolves we see our soldier start out as an alien in the indigenous civilization who is trying to interact, but over time he goes from curious, to dedicated student, to enthusiastic supporter, to native, gradually. The film allows us to see the character change over time and when he finally fully integrates into the Sioux society it is completely believable. In Avatar our soldier goes from spy/student to native without us ever really seeing it happen. It was like... poof... native. Really? I knew it was coming because it was so obviously going to happen that it was sort of embarrassing, but I still would have liked to see it develop rather than just... happen. That's not my biggest beef though.

My biggest beef was the ridiculous deus ex machina during the battle scene. Like... c'mon, Cameron. The natives and their bows and arrows have put up a valiant fight against the big bad human military machines and it's all heroic and all that shit and we're all proud of them and everything but we know they are compost and that is the way it's going to be yadda yadda yaddda... then suddenly [gasp!] the wild animals all join in the fight! Hooray! The big bad beasties come and drive the mean old humans out of their happy fairy tail forest and yay! I actually laughed when the first charge of dino-terrestrials came plowing at the ground troops. I LOL'd for real. Yes, I understand Ripley from Alien believed out of know where without any set up that the moon itself was some how sentient. The plants and animals were all connected in some weird planetary neural network. Yes, I was watching when that particular story arc appeared out of thin air. If that's the case, and the big tree is dead and everyone is pissed off... why wasn't the sentient moon fighting back right then? Why did it wait until the saddest, darkest moment of the battle before it woke up and started playing along? I'll tell you why. It happened that way because the story was written by a 1st grader who thought it would be dramatic to have the entire basis of the story change on a dime and have salvation pulled out of his ass. That's why. It was pathetic. Really, it was shameful.

Anyway, those are my huge beefs with Avatar. Again, maybe if I'd seen it in a theater in 3D it might have been more impressive. The special effects were spectacular, but really how much different was it than a Pixar movie? It was more lifelike, but there are plenty of moments in plenty of Pixar films where the animation is so good you have to remind yourself it's not real. Avatar was, to me, more like Who Framed Roger Rabbit than the huge CGI masterpiece people see it as. It was a live action/cartoon mix.

It was also fun. It's not a great movie, but it is fun.

You may be wondering what prompted a movie review today. Well it's simple. Some idiot in Vancouver booked a concert in their hockey arena tonight so game two of the Stanley Cup Finals has to wait until tomorrow. I don't have a Bruins game to freak out about today, so I have to get pissy about something... and Avatar is it.

GO BRUINS!