Review
Review Date: 4-July-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK
The Last Airbender (2010)
The good news is that M. Night Shyamalan resembles George Lucas. He is evidently fascinated by myth and determined to bring it to a large audience in a way that blends the traditional with the innovative. Two of his recent pictures, Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender, are proof of this. The bad news is that M. Night Shyamalan resembles George Lucas. He insists on writing, producing, and directing his own work when the input of others might smooth out its rough edges. The Last Airbender is particular proof of this. The movie, which Shyamalan adapted from a popular television cartoon, features stunning images and film-worthy ideas but suffers from an amateurish style. (To begin with, Mr. Do-It-All does not have a grasp of subject-verb agreement, reason to have enlisted an editor for his screenplay.) To use the movie's Eastern religious terminology, The Last Airbender is impaired by lack of flow.
The movie tells the first chapter in a series which I suspect will never get off the ground. It takes place in a legendary past when people belonged to one of four tribes: Air, Water, Earth, or Fire. A few members of each tribe are able to manipulate, or "bend," their totem element into a weapon or tool, but there is only ever one person in the world, the Avatar, who can bend all four. In the opening scene the current Avatar, a boy named Aang (Noah Ringer), resurfaces after being frozen in ice for a century. He is befriended by a waterbender (Nicola Peltz) and her brother (Jackson Rathbone) who are slightly older than he. Although the Avatar's long absence has rendered him little more than a fairy tale in many minds, rulers of the tyrannic Fire Nation have anticipated his return as a threat to their conquest of the other tribes. Aang is hotly pursued from the moment he regains life.
Along with uniting the Fire Nation's enemies and eluding their traps, Aang must complete his education to fulfill his role on the planet. Fortunately, elemental bending is a highly theatrical art, akin to performing tai chi with a flamethrower. Although the Avatar is essentially a Buddhist monk who wields his powers for the diffusion of violence, that does not preclude scenes of training, escape, and unavoidable battle in which people direct whirlwinds, streams of flame, and sheets of water at each other to impressive effect. When the action subsides the extremely serious young actors are left to choke on stilted lines and flounder in their characters' underdevelopment. Their adult foils are routinely good or evil, leaving the not-a-child, not-yet-full-grown Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) to inhabit the grey area that always accounts for the meatiest roles. Patel, erstwhile hero of Slumdog Millionaire, has a star quality that could dignify The Last Airbender if the show goes on. The prince has been banished from the Fire Nation and his only hope of reclaiming both honor and throne lies in capturing the Avatar. Thus he combines the ruthlessness of a man on a mission with a hurt that might foster compassion. Some subtlety is needed to bring his character to fruition. If Shyamalan gets a shot at the next installment, here's hoping he has the sense not to go it alone.
Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
