The Last Airbender

Not to be confused with James Cameron's Avatar, The Last Airbender is the film adaptation of the first season of the kids' television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, from Nickelodeon.  Despite being an American children's series, Avatar: The Last Airbender has garnered attention from kids and adults alike, especially appealing to fans of Anime.  It was extremely well directed with artwork and writing well above average, excellent voice talent, and a story compelling enough to keep anyone's attention.  It is with good reason that fans of the show were nervous about M. Night Shyamalan directing the film version as his track record has, for the most part, gone steadily down hill.

The story tells of the Avatar, a reincarnated being who can control the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.  In this case, he is a young boy, Aang (Noah Ringer), an Air Nomad, the last of his kind.  Hence the title.  Having been lost, frozen, for the past 100 years, he awakens to find the Fire Nation has declared war on the rest of the world and things are no longer well for anyone else.  With some new found friends, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara (Nicola Peltz), a brother and sister from the Southern Water Tribe, Aang sets out to defeat the Fire Lord (Cliff Curtis).  Along the way he faces the Fire Lord's banished son Zuko (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire, and the only actor here who acts like he cares he is in a movie) and a Fire Nation General, Zhao (Aasif Mandvi), both of whom have personal reasons for capturing the Avatar.

I went into this film knowing it was bad and still was disappointed.  I am not going to go into detail about all the changes from the source material that were made for seemingly no good reason, but there is a rather comprehensive list here to look at.  I will say this - how the **** do you pronounce half the main characters' names wrong when you can simply look at an entire television series to hear them?

If I had half stars I would add one onto the score because if you have no knowledge of the series going in to it, as a movie in and of itself it is almost passable if you have low standards.  The plot is rushed and often makes little sense, the battles - something the show was known for - are at times tedious, the actors either seem like they don't care or don't know what they are doing.  If there is something opposite of character development, this movie features it prominently.  There are really so many things wrong with it - basically the whole construction is shaky at best and the only thing that saves it at all are some decent special effects at times.  Though, from what I've heard, those are lost in some muddy cinematography if you watch it in post converted 3D as it was marketed.

For fans of the series, this movie feels like a crime against something that had so much potential to be good, and should not have been hard to make as such.  For the average movie goer, this is a forgettable/bad experience that will probably prevent them from ever giving the series the chance it deserves.

*(1/5 stars)

MacGruber

MacGruber, the film version of the SNL skit of the same name joins the ranks of such comedic icons as Coneheads and The Blues Brothers, though this SNL adaptation is not nearly as funny.  A parody of the classic 80's television show, MacGyver, the film features Will Forte as the titular hero.  SNL regulars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph co-star and Val Kilmer is, for some reason, the villain Dieter Von Cunth, who looks oddly like Steven Seagal, and whose last name is used repeatably.

Cunth has taken possession of a very dangerous nuclear missile and the only person who can stop him from whatever nefarious plot he has up his sleeve is MacGruber who has been hiding out in remote Ecuador after faking his own death to retire.  He has a personal vendetta against Cunth though, he being responsible for the gruesome death of his bride (Rudolph) on their wedding day.  That is enough for MacGruber to come out of retirement and assemble a crack team which includes his new love interest Vicki St. Elmo (Wiig) and a bunch of other people who don't matter because MacGruber accidently blows them all up at the beginning.  Youngster Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) joins them and they are off to stop Cunth using a combination of ripping out throats and waddling around naked with stalks of celery stuck between their cheeks.

Some movies are so stupid that they are amazing.  That's a dangerous goal to shoot for, however, because if a film comes just shy of accomplishing that, all you are left with is an incredibly stupid mess of a film in which people have sex with ghosts and the greatest secret agent of all time has the intelligence of a rat fed a steady diet of LSD and Xanax while wearing a mullet wig.  With the right crowd in the right situation this movie will probably induce a decent number of laughing fits - if only by making people laugh at other people for laughing at the movie in the first place.

Even stupid humour needs some intelligence of some kind.    You know how some SNL skits don't seem to make much sense?  This is like a bunch of those thrown together, connected by a plot concocted by two ten year old boys who were inspired by a funny sounding fart.

*(1/5 stars)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is based on the first book in Rick Riordan's currently popular series which brings Greek mythology to life in modern times.

Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is a 16 or 17 year old (though he and the other characters are all around 12 in the book) who struggles in school due to dyslexia and ADHD.  It's not long, however, before he finds out that these are only symptoms of the fact that he is indeed half god.  Too bad he finds out because he's suspected of stealing Zeus's master bolt and had lots of scary creatures suddenly trying to kill him.  Good thing he has his wheel chair bound teacher Mr. Brunner (Pierce Brosnan) and crippled best friend Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) who just happen to be Chiron the centaur and a satyr assigned to be his (junior) protector in disguise.  Anyone see a theme of looking at disabilities in a positive light here?

As the first half of the book flashes by in the blink of any eye we find Percy at Camp Half Blood, frenemies with Athena's Daughter Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and off on a quest to save his mother who is being held by Hades (Steve Coogan) accompanied by Grover and Annabeth with the help of Herme's son Luke (Jake Abel).  This and more happens in about the first 15 minutes and I haven't even talked about the exposition scene with Zeus (Sean Bean) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), his mother's (Catherine Keener) death, his step father's (Joe Pantoliano) disgustingness, the minotaur, the fury, the car chase, sword fights, capture the flag and Percy's revelation of his heritage and powers.  The book dragged these things out excruciatingly, keeping the extremely obvious a secret with blatant hints that made you scream "I get it already!" but the movie blazes through all set up so fast that any scene that could have developed any character at all or given any sort of logic to the proceedings is lost.

It's a hard to figure out how such an all star cast, which also includes Uma Thurman as Medusa and Rosario Dawson as Persephone, got involved in such a stinker.  I can only imagine that "Harry Potter" was thrown around a lot.  As in, "this is the next Harry Potter," and " Chris Columbus directed a Harry Potter movie too!"  I was not that impressed with the book, though I thought the ideas had promise.  The movie ignored much of the book, but not in a good way.  It changed things that mattered as well as random other things for seemingly no reason.  Entire parts of the quest are cut out and a new scene involving the Parthenon is added in.  I assume the writers didn't want to waste a perfectly good free set in Nashville.  I realize that the characters have been aged a bit to make it seem like less of a kid movie, but even if they are a bit older than their 12 year old literature counterparts, does casting a 26 year old in the role make any sense?  All of the actors are way older than their characters.  There is just about zero character development, and the acting from even experienced players is like mushy cardboard.

One thing that I was impressed with was the sword play.  Too bad Percy was supposed to suck at using a sword instead of being instantly awesome with no training whatsoever.


There is one demographic that will enjoy this movie.  Very young children who like fantasy action, could care less about the plot, and have not read the book.  This joins the likes of Eragon and City of Ember as one of the worst book to movie adaptations ever.


*(1/5 stars)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I watched this one purely out of morbid curiosity.  As a Star Wars fan it seemed that I should see this latest entry into the franchise, if only to know how bad it really is.  I had low expectations, but I was wrong.  They should have been lower.

The (strangely) animated film is nearly devoid of any original actors, featuring only the brief voice work of Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee, and Samuel L. Jackson who apparently had nothing better to do for a day.  The rest of the cast was made up of people I had never heard of - which wasn't entirely a bad thing since that meant that I didn't have to listen to Hayden Christensen whine throughout the whole thing, and whoever was imitating Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan did a dang fine job.

The whole plot involves strangely wise and heroic - not to mention gravity defying - Anakin Skywalker and his spunky little padawan Ahsoka on a mission to rescue Jabba the Hutt's baby son which, surprise surprise, was a trap set by Dooku (Lee).  Ahsoka and "Sky Guy," as she calls him, bond, learn a lesson, and save the day.  On a side note, we're introduced to Jabba's gay uncle, Ziro.  Yes.

I realize that the whole point of this movie was to introduce a new, much younger, generation to the world of Star Wars and that this and the subsequent television series are probably the first exposure to Star Wars most kids these days have.  That is no excuse, however, for George Lucas to create this steaming pile that falls well below the intelligence of most children's shows today - and that is saying something.  The music too, failed to be anything close to "Star Warsy" except for the opening title and end credits - and even then it was like an upbeat pop version of John Williams.

Kids will probably like it, what with heroic lightsaber battles that never really seem to have a point since you know none of the main characters will die before Revenge of the Sith and the predictable one liners like "Great.  Rolling death balls," or "The medicine, it's working. His fever broke. I think he's going to live to stink another day."  The language is updated for the audience too with phrases like "The shield is putting a crimp in my day."  Because Obi Wan would say something like that.  Kids would probably like driving on a sidewalk too - doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I could go on, but when an hour and thirty minutes of the 1:38 movie are worthy of being brought to the chopping block - well, I don't want to spend any more time on this movie than I already have.

* (1/5 stars)