LAKE OCONEE — The Last Airbender

Rated PG for fantasy action violence.



“The Last Airbender” is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on a cartoon on the Nickelodeon (cable) channel called “Avatar, The Last Airbender.” Apparently (and I learned this by reading background on the film) in the far, far future, after civilization has been destroyed, the world is populated by three tribes: Earth People, Water People, and Fire People. Some of the people within the tribes can “bend” their “name” element. This means they can make their element do their bidding.

The Fire people, ruled by Firebenders, dress like 1930s fascists, and shoot fire at people and terrorize the other tribes. Bad Firebenders.

One day, two youngsters, a boy and a girl, Katara and Sukko, who are supposed to look like Intuits but resemble Mouseketeers from Anaheim, discover a little boy named Aang (who is supposed to be Asian but looks like a tattooed Beaver Cleaver) frozen in an ice bubble. The girl has waterbender powers by the way. She broke the bubble that revealed the boy. Why? Don’t ask me. Teenagers, after the apocalypse, apparently are still indecipherable.

Aang apparently is the last Avatar---a master of all four bender abilities, but the little tyke ran away from his teachers before he mastered the four elements; the only one he learned was airbending. Since there are no Airbenders left, he is, TA DA: The Last Airbender.

Confused yet? Let me give you a helpful tip: the four tribes made me think of a version of Rock-Paper-Scissors with one of those, say Scissors, going power-mad and bulling the other two. I never trusted Scissors.

You know those old folks, primarily Asian, who hang out in parks in the morning and do that Tai Chi (actually t'ai chi ch'uan) stuff? Well, half of this movie consists of cast members doing this just before earth, fire, air, and water start flying around. I thought that such gyrations would look really coordinated. Nope. The old folks in the park have these actors beat.

Most of the actors are, alas, either bad actors or good actors trapped in a really ghastly script with a crummy and cheesy plot.

And somebody thought about making the film 3D, but only after the film was made. This is always a very bad idea. It made the film dark and seem out of focus. If you must see it, go to the 2D version.

You may be a fan of TV's "Kung Fu" and entertainment of that ilk, but beware, Grasshopper, this is a clunker of a film; an embarrassment. It will clearly be listed as one of the worst films of 2010.

The film is being attacked because the cast is supposed to be mostly Asian but, instead, looks like break time at the UN, but without any black folks.

It is supposed to be the first film of the trilogy, but I think the future looks very bleak for the Bender Clans. I suspect that if we want to know what happens next, we need to find where Nickelodeon dwells on the channel lineup.

Poor M. Night Shymalan. He desperately needs to make a good movie. His career has not been very golden of late. He seems to be mired in cinematic quicksand. Apparently, he simply lacks a Sixth Sense for good stories.



“The Last Airbender” earns one dingy bow tie.