Debbie and I watched Avatar tonight. We don’t go to the movies. I think the last time we went to a theater to watch a movie was at Quimby Village to see Steven Seagal in “On Deadly Ground.” If you’re from Fort Wayne you know without looking it up on imdb.com that it had to be a long time ago. Quimby Village shut down as a movie theater a long time gone by now.
So nowadays we see movies only as they bubble to the top of our Netflix queue, and “Avatar” finally reached that exalted position, why, just a year to the day of its release, according to the aforementioned imdb.com.
We’d read the reviews of Avatar and our expectations were low. They weren’t low enough. We expected it to be preachy and dull and heavy-handed. It was none of those. It was just dumb.
I suppose the computerized graphics were impressive enough, but honestly every time a big blue thing started waving their arms I couldn’t help thinking, “that looks like Shrek!”
I’d comment on the plot, except there wasn’t one.
I really liked the scene towards the end where the evil colonel burst from the flames of his wrecked flying thingie (Starfighter? Starfury? Star Destroyer?). I’d love to run it side by side with Arnold the Terminator rising from the wreckage of the flaming semi in the “The Terminator.” I shouldn’t dis James Cameron for reusing scenes from a 26 year old movie. I was thinking just today about some software I was writing reminded me of the same thing I doing in 1985.
The only entertainment in this movie was identifying the actors in it (by running to the now doubly aforementioned imdb.com (easily the world’s dumbest web site, but that’s another rant)). “Look, that’s the boyfriend from ‘Lost In Translation’!” “Look, it’s CCH Pounder, you know, the psychologist from Benny and Joon!”
If you want to disconnect your brain from the world for 2 hours and 40-some minutes and you’re not into drugs or alcohol, “Avatar” is an excellent way to spend an evening on the couch with glazed eyes and a drone-like “mmmm” coming from your mouth.
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