New name, regular feature.

Hello again, and welcome to Boog's little corner of Geek Streak for another edition of the tentatively titled, 'Flick Picks'. This week's episode is full of drama, bad acting, dancing in the place of anything resembling choreography, and stilted exposition in the place of any real dialogue. For we are going into one of the latest abominations of cartoon/anime turned into film, Shyamalan's take on The Last Airbender. Oh, and SPOILERS!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, a trailer of the film can be found here. A bit about the cartoon it was based on here, and some episodes from the show here. Now with educational link dump out of the way, let's get on with this train wreck. First, let me assure you that I am not covering this film as a rabid fan of the cartoon. I found out about the cartoon from my then 14 year old nephew, a year before the film came out, and had maybe seen about half of the total episodes by the time my eyes were exposed to the film. So I had some feelings and expectations, sure, but nothing as rabid as say,
all of the mothers and teens obsessed with a badly written book series about sparkly vampires.

But hey, that's another blog. Here's where I go into the film in detail. If you haven't seen it, here's a good place to stop reading. First, the casting is terrible. Noah Ringer, the kid who plays the title character, had not done anything before this, and it shows. All he is asked to do is occasionally look at he camera with a scared look, and otherwise say his lines in a monotone, with "eye flutters", or that annoying ass blinking thing Kristen Stewart somehow made popular. He seriously looks entirely out of his depth, and not as a character. The other main characters don't fair much better. Nicola Peltz, who plays Katara, is reduced to talking plot point by the script, and the emotional range she shows elsewhere proves she wouldn't have been good for much else. Jackson Rathbone, whom I already dislike thanks to his connection to previously mentioned Twilight franchise, really doesn't pull anything great here either. He is supposed to be the comic relief, but thanks to crap writing, and the film's obsession with DRAMA (I'll be getting to that), he comes off a whiny, idiotic, and rather pointless. Dev Patel, as Prince Zuko, had the potential to be the one bright spot in a sea of crap. I mean he was in a Oscar winning film, Slumdog Millionaire, that has to count for something, right? No, unfortunately, he gets the same two-dimensional brush that all the others are painted with, and therefore gets script action that is entirely nonsensical.

What about the side characters, you ask? Well, they are pretty terrible as well. Shaun Toub, who plays Uncle Iroh, is okay, but nothing special, putting a friendly spin on the 'wise old man' he played in Iron Man as Yinsen. Aasif Mandvi, where do I start? You get a man that reports for The Daily Show using volume for laughs, and then have him portray the exact same persona, only expect it to be taken seriously? What are you on, M. Night? Cliff Curtis, playing the main villain Firelord Ozai, was a slightly better performance, mainly because he didn't have to provide any exposition. He was a two-dimensional bad guy, but in the 'nyah, nyah, I'm in charge, so I'm EBIL' kind of way. His performance here had none of the bits that made his bit parts in films like The Fountain, and Live Free or Die Hard, somewhat memorable.

The Visual Effects do what they are supposed to, look like fire, or water, or whatever, moving through the air to hit someone. since that's about 90% of the visual effects, however, it gets pretty boring. The music is okay, with some bits recalling other epic themes, like the Hoth siege in The Empire Strikes Back, but it's not enough to lift this film above mediocre. The costume design is a high point, as it seems they were the only department to watch the cartoon they were basing it off of. Rich colors, good coordination, even the styles of clothing differ enough to present a world of vastly different communities, at least in costume form.

Now, the dialogue and choreography. Wow. First, 80% of the dialogue, is exposition either explaining what is going to happen in the next ten minutes, reexplaining what HAS happened over the last ten minutes, or reexplaining because nothing happened over the last ten minutes and they don't want you getting lost in the myriad, four, maybe five lines of actual plot. The action is even worse. Whether they show any 'bending' in the episodes I've linked above, the basic breakdown of the concept is this: People attuned to a certain element, move that element with the power of their will, focused through a physical, ritualistic application of martial arts. Or, Tai Chi can make you move rocks. That said, most of the bending in the cartoon is shown as being pretty dang easy, being that it is explained in that universe, that benders are found at a very young age, training as close to birth as possible, becoming revered in their communities in the process. It gives you a feeling of awe watching, as character as young as 12 move mountains and tornadoes simply because they have to. Watching the film however, would make you believe a duel between benders would take weeks, as sometimes the character will be halfway through a kata(group of martial arts moves, placed together either for effectiveness in combat, or for training purposes) before a single molecule even moves. And that's even for the benders who are supposed to be 'masters'. This particular thing I need to nitpick on, because the amount of time it takes for the bending in the movie begs the question: Why doesn't somebody just stab the main character? Movie's over, we can all go home. Also, the stylized martial arts used for the bending, make it really easy to spot where action has been staged for the sake of the plot.

Seriously, stay away from this piece of utter trash. Unless a friend is inviting you to watch the rifftrax. Even then, I'd think twice. This film was just an utter disappointment from beginning to end. I hope M. Night Learns his lesson, although the show's creators are also both listed as executive producers, so shame on them too. Not sure what film I'm doing next, but hopefully, it'll be a good one.