GossipDuck

REVIEW: Avatar 3D

December 26, 2009 - 1 Comment

by sbahns

My husband and I managed to sneak away from the house late Christmas Eve to go see James Cameron’s Avatar 3D.  Thanks very much my brother was willing to hang out at our place and hold down the fort so we could have a very rare few hours to ourselves.  It felt odd to be traipsing out when we’re supposed to be getting presents ready and adding to the magic of Christmas morning for our 4 year old and almost 2 year old.

[Side Note: As we were headed out for a 10:00 p.m. show and even though we were on time, I looked the time up on the Fandango app on my iPhone on the way to make sure.  So we're driving along and I see that I can buy the tickets right there en route.  I think "Hey that's neat! How does that work? How do you get in?  Show them your iPhone or something?" So I go ahead and pay the extra $2.00 "convenience fee." Apparently this still requires that you go to the ticket booth to swipe your credit card and get your tickets. We did, however, find out later that you can bypass lines by going to the kiosks in the lobby.]

So we settle in to watch the film.  I don’t know anything about it aside from that there are blue people and Stephen Lang in it.  I don’t seek out trailers or follow the buzz about movies before I go to see them.  Generally I feel previews and trailers reveal too much of the story.  I prefer to see how well the movie takes me through the story without any foreknowledge.  That said, I don’t purposefully avoid reviews, I just don’t seek them out.

If I were to sum up my feelings on the movie in one sentence, it would be simply: The visual effects in this film are stunning.

Avatar 3D may be the first film I  have seen in 3D aside from U2 3D that I think was really enhanced by the extra dimension. It makes the world seem more real and much more like you are actually there.  They don’t go out of their way to make things jump out at you – which, in my opinion is a smart move. I don’t feel those sort of effects are very effective and just distracting. Even without the 3D the world is beautiful.  Visually, this is a movie, you should see in the theater, in 3D.  It is worth it.

Now, praises aside I do have some criticisms. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very enjoyable film.  However, it does lack a few things – like an original plot. I would be surprised if anyone would find anything that happens in the film to be anything but predictable.  They manage to make it work, though, in spite of its retelling of a tale we’ve heard a thousand times.

The designer in me was also mortified to see the Papyrus font used for the subtitles. That decision felt extremely amateurish.  I mean you spend millions of dollars on a blockbuster film and you can spend a little extra to get a custom font?  I’ve found that rookie designers or people who don’t work with design gravitate to fonts like Papyrus because they think it looks mysterious or something.  That may be…if you have never seen it before.  If you’re going to use a free font, use Helvetica for crap’s sake.  It, at least, isn’t distracting.

But, hey, at least it wasn’t Comic Sans.  I probably would have walked out then.

So here’s my take on Avatar 3D:

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Bring the kids?: Ideally kids over 7, but it depends on your family and the kid.  Upon reflection, It might be ok for my 4 year old. There is a good overall message in the movie and it gives a lot of opportunity for discussion about environmental and cultural issues vs.corporate interests, the rights of indigenous peoples, history, military, sciences, etc.  There is a lot of fighting and explosion-type stuff, though, so if that is disturbing to your kid, avoid this film.  On the other hand, the destruction is not glorified and is portrayed as very negative.

Story keeps you guessing?: Umm…no.

How’s the acting?: Very good actually.  The characters were all very well done in spite of each of them portraying a stereotype. The fact that they did such a good job with most of the film being done with green-screens is also remarkable.  After the last three Star Wars movies I was convinced that green screen acting would never be as good as on a real set or on location. But obviously James Cameron is a better director in that regard.  Michelle Rodriguez is probably the weakest of all the actors because she simply plays the same stinkin’ character all the time, but that’s not entirely her fault.

Eye Candy?: Loads and loads of it. If you can OD on eye candy this film will do it for you.  Also – the computer generated images in this film are so well done, most of the time you don’t think about them being CGI.

Wait for DVD/Blu-Ray?: No, go ahead and see it in the theater.

Tags: 3D, avatar, Computer-generated imagery, james cameron

Category: Films, Reviews, sbahns