...like a blonde bombshell, looks magnificent, but once she opens her mouth, game over.

For a movie to inspire me enough to add it to my vast list (link on the sidebar, if you wish to check it out) it needs to fit certain criteria. For example: Casino is in there because 1. I’m a sucker for a good gangster flick and 2. the dialogue was just brilliant (as with most Scorsese films); Hook is there because, even watching it today, I am brought back to my childhood with that sense of adventure and believing that, with just a little fairy dust and a happy thought, I can fly through clouds and duel with pirates; Wedding Crashers is there because it was original and smart for it’s time (even as a 14 year old kid, I knew that this was a light in the dark cave of poop humor comedies).

Avatar was a different story.

I went into this film with the lowest of expectations. I just couldn’t buy into the hype that Avatar was going to “change film forever”, even hearing about how James Cameron had to create his own technology to make the darn thing. I knew about the actual actors Mocapping the entire film. I knew that Cameron had been writing the script for over a decade until his technology could be realized. I’ve seen his movies, I’m a fan of his work (some of it being on my list), but I just didn’t want to believe the hype.

I feel it is my duty as one who claims to love going to the movies to state that I do believe James Cameron has succeeded in revolutionizing film for our generation.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the movie on IMAX, but I did shell out the extra money to see it in 3D and I actually felt goosebumps, seeing how amazing everything looked (from the military base our hero landed on, to the world of Pandorum itself). It’s the first time I could honestly say I felt as if I was looking through not just a window, but (as a friend cleverly put it) a portal into another realm, an achievement few films can claim, but all films should strive for. The effects were just magnificent, and truly magical (without spoiling anything, there is a scene where the main character is romping through Pandorum at night, and everything was glowing…I longed to be able to jump through the screen and see it all for myself).

Now, one more thing about the movies on my list are replay value.  I have to always ask myself if I’d be willing to pay to see a movie again.

Would I pay to see Avatar again? Absolutely not, for one reason (and most of you who have read reviews know what I’m going to say).

The script.

This script, which James Cameron had over a decade to work on and polish, just fell short of average. What I was hearing did not capture me as much as what I was watching. The story was just so bland and predictable. It’s as if he was watching the movie Pocahontas one day and thought “what if I made this about humans and aliens, rather than the British and Native Americans?” Sure, there was the occasional chuckle moment when the hero trips over himself, or is called a moron by the Na’vi (the “natives”), but nothing that truly captured, shocked, saddened, or inspired me.

If you’re still reading this, then here’s my final verdict: Avatar is, not only a beautiful movie, but an important one that you must see  in a theater at least once in your life. It’s one of those movies that they will replay in movie theaters 30, 40, maybe even 50 years in the future. You can almost say Avatar, like (possibly) Star Wars IV: A New Hope, or, dare I say, the first movie in technicolor (The Gulf Between), is more like an event than a movie. You just may find yourself telling your kid or grand-kid about where you were and what was going through your mind when you were watching Avatar in those things called movie theaters (assuming technology deems them obsolete, or they don’t exist due to world domination by our robot overlords).

I know I will…I’ll just have to finish my story with “…too bad about that script, though…”

An Under-appreciated movie.

The first time I ever saw this flick, I found it to be mildly funny because of Jim Carrey’s usual silly shtick. This was when I was, maybe, 6-7 years old. When I got the blessing of having Cinemax for free this week (an event I wait every year for), I got to see it again, unedited, as a teenager (young adult?).

I now appreciate this movie more than ever before. I suppose it was Carrey’s first toe in the water of dramatic acting (he plays a tragic psychopath, for crying out loud), and I found that I enjoyed this better than…most “other” movies (see: The Majestic). It definitely gets its message across (that humans [Americans] spend just too much time and care on Television), and this message is just as true today as it was in the mid 1990s. The fictional case portrayed in the movie about the guy who killed his twin brother (who was a famous child actor)  could be related to any of the other news stories that we waste our lives paying attention to (from OJ to MJ). All of these distractions to real life. Infotainment.

It’s ironic, how the very message this movie tries to convey is told through a movie. A kind of poetic irony, I suppose.

Anyway, PS, if you haven’t seen this movie for a while, I suggest you watch it once or twice more. If not for the message, just for the entertaining formula of Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Jack Black (one of his very early movies), and Ben Stiller (his directing debut, I believe). As the first “frat pack” movie (reportedly), it is definitely one “Black Comedy” worth seeing.