Avatar: Review By AnnoyingFilmCritic

James Cameron is the best Used Car Salesman around. After many months of anticipation, few trailers and no test screenings, the director with a God complex finally roled out his magnum opus/shiny Cadillac onto Theatre lots. It looked GREAT!! So Shiny, so New...Wow, I've never seen wheels like that! The chrome glistens, the paint in immaculate and the leather is so supple...I've got to have this!

Let's look under the hood...alright, the engine compartment is a little dirty, but, the V8 motor...wait, it's a 4cylinder! This 2 & 1/2 ton big car doesn't have enough engine displacement to keep it moving...hmmm, ok, let's get the keys and start it up. I sit in the seats, noticing the cracking now in the aged leather crevices. I turn the ignition, the engine is Sputtering...Sputtering...it finally Roars to life! Ok, ok, it sounds LOUD! I wonder if its an exhaust leak? Crap! Now I'm seeing a spreading Crack in the windshield! Dammit! I know those glass cracks only get worse as it goes...such is the movie Avatar!

Avatar is a heavy handed, sci-fi parable mess of ecological & colonization nobility spoonfed with acres of sugary, crunchy cartoon cereal goodness. I mixed metaphors there with the used cars and kid cereal, but, you get the point - Style over substance.

The movie's well worn science fiction plot of ethnocentriciy and subjegation of perceived inferior races is prevaricated on its protagonist, Jake Sully, a parapalegic Marine who stands in for his recently deceased brother (due to his DNA composition matching his Avatar ) on a reconnaissance mission on a faraway, lush, jungle planet Pandora. Avatars are huge, blue alien clones that have been bio-engineered & remotely controlled by humans to meet their exploitive ends, such is the curse of technology. Here, it is to integrate & ingratiate with the real species, called Na'vi, in order to gain access to a very precious rock resource that looks like calco pyrite, aka, Fool's Gold. Ah, another metaphor I could have used for this review. I digress, so, the main character, Jake Sully, played well by Australian newcomer, Sam Worthington, stands in for the wide eyed audience...we go on this dazzling - looking adventure through him, marveling at the all encompassing techno-colored, dense junglescape that lives & breathes in every pocket of every pocket. This is where Avatar succeeds like no other film in submersing the moviegoer in such a labyrinth of lush, otherworldly beauty...and if you see it in 3D, as it should be seen, you are definately in for an eye candy treat! Recreational Drug Abusers: this should be on your DVD shelf next to your copies of Pink Floyd's "The Wall," "Heavy Metal" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory!"

The 3D technology that has been purported & created by Cameron is a great, technical feat that is so well done! What an enveloping experience it is from the rote expositional scenes at headquarters to diving down a steep cliff on winged dinosaurs. It's a cinematic Six Flags ride! (there's a blurb for marketing)

This was the quickest, yet, long as hell movie I've seen, taking the crown from the last Lord of the Rings movie in that respect...it never seems to end - damn epics/egomaniacal directors! It felt long to me because crucial components like story & character development were eschewed for sparkling, CGI Pop Rocks. The movie seems to be weighted about 70% towards look-at-how-cool-Pandora-is & the Na'vi species are noble beings living in peace. 15% towards usurpation by far Right, myopic- Republican/Corporate venality dominating Far Left, tree-hugging Liberal savages. In that sense, Avatar this socio-economic plight might have some traction with the young, texting-every-minute-crowd.

Subtlety is just not in James Cameron's playbook, but, lifting George Lucas's "Force" sprituality via Avatar's "Ewa" is gross negligence. This spiritual deity takes the form of diaphanous jellyfish-like creatures that float around & choose you, are omnipresent in all living things & can be consulted/influenced by the aforementioned, noble Na'vi species. Here's a hypothetical battle: Lucas's sub-atomic Midi Chlorians vs. Cameron's Ewa jellyfish...winner: Lucas! Why, because, there are actual moments of poignancy/dramatic urgency with the Force in the original Star Wars trilogy. In Avatar, the Ewa-spiritual thing is nothing more than a eco-plot contrivance. I never fely Anything for it or got invested in Any of the characters. I liked the Jake Sully/Sam Worthington character, but, never got to know him or care what happened in the course of the story. He has the standard, checkpoint flaw in order to derive sympathy for the hero, but, I didn't root for him like Luke Skywalker, like Rick Deckard/Harrison Ford in Bladerunner or like Neo/Reeves in the first Matrix. Every character in Avatar is a one dimensional archetype in a pretty video game, or Used Car.