Film Review: Avatar – Pocahontas in blue makeup


film student for life / Monday, February 1st, 2010

It’s like: Pocahontas meets Surrogates meets Ferngully

Stars you’d know: More known for its director, James Cameron. Sigourney Weaver. Giovanni Ribisi. Michelle Rodriguez.

Their tagline: Enter the world.

My tagline: Enter the matrix of Ferngully.

Verdict: It was alright.

I know, I know, I should’ve been blown away, right? Well, I did see it in 3-D, which was cool, and the action scenes were pretty awesome, but the whole motion/animation fantastical world was overshadowed by a very watered-down script. Even with all that money invested, if you don’t have a decent storyline, I’m not going to like it. But, ok, the special effects were pretty cool. The way the animation captured facial movement was unreal. Neytiri should have won a prize for the amount of expression that came across her blue face…I guess I was just wanting to be blown away by the visual effects, blown away by the characters, blown away by the storyline. And I just wasn’t. I was, however, thoroughly entertained. One thing this movie definitely was was a spectacle. And I miss spectacle movies. Ironically, the last spectacle movie I think I saw was Star Trek, which Zoe Saldana (Neytiri) was in. I miss the “popcorn” movies where all you do is escape into another world for a couple hours (in this case, close to three!), and find release. If anything, I was entertained and forgot about my worries. I just wasn’t blown away.

If you like, please share!