7-08-10 Movie Review: The Last Airbender

Three noncommercial film showings between now and next Wednesday night: tonight at 8, the Tallgrass Al Fresco series shows Thoroughly Modern Millie, with Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing with an Oscar for music, a Golden Globe for Channing, and four more nominations for Oscars and four others for Golden Globes, all at 8 preceded by a Tallgrass short, at the Brickyard, 129 North Rock Island; also Thursday, the League of Women Voters series presents What’s the Matter with Kansas, from the book by Thomas Frank, with one of the moviemakers, Joe Winston, and discussion after the showings, Thursday at 6:00 in the Downtown Library, not the usual place; and Sunday at 2:30, the Metropolitan Opera Production of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin will be on the big screen, with subtitles, at the Murdock 536 North Broadway.


And commercially, we have a variously reviewed children’s fantasy adventure in The Last Airbender.


The Minneapolis, Minnesota reviewer gave The Last Airbender three stars and said that once he gave up on following the plot, he “had a fine time” in “sensory input mode”; Turner Classic Movies’ Ben Mankiewicz graded it F and labeled it “unwatchable.” Well, I certainly watched it, every minute of its almost two hours, though I’m not sure I enjoyed more than a few minutes, and that just the visuals.


The whole thing is based on a Nickelodeon animated series, and it looks like a comic book; the plot may be unfollowable, but the episodes are so cliché-ridden that you hardly need to follow anything, just fill in the gaps with memories of other movies, because all we have is battles and martial arts and travels from on exotic locale to another on the customary quest to save civilization from a nasty old villain who wants to rule the world. There are wise old men like Obi-Wan and Yoda and Dumbledor, if I have that last name right, but the major action, this being from Nickelodeon, is left to subteenagers, with the reincarnated superhero very subteenage indeed. There is a vast amount of waving about of the arms, like demented hula dancers, apparently supposed to suggest yoga, which somehow morphs into big orange explosions which join the long list of standard elements that make up the whole movie. The main flying animal is called by the Minneapolis reviewer “a flying six-legged albino beaver,” which suggests its credibility, aerodynamically and otherwise.


But the Minneapolis reviewer also says that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan “focuses on ‘the characters’ humanity, wedding emotions and effects,” and here I cannot follow him. I could see occasional efforts along these lines, but the actors never got through to me; they always seemed to be Hollywood Orientals, exuding imperturbability and Eastern stoicism, about as interesting as the plot that their personalities dialogue kept trying to make clear.


It has been suggested that The Last Airbender is intended to start a franchise, like Star Wars or at least The Lord of the Rings, and that many of its problems stem from trying to introduce too many characters and elements of future plots. Let us hope that, in times as cinematically dreary as these, we are to be spared something.