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Movie Review: Avatar (*** out of 4 stars)

Year of Release: 2009

Country of Origin: USA, UK

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi

Plot outline: A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the new world he feels is his home (IMDb).

The story (*** The story itself is by turns intricate and simplistic, dark and bright, flippant and worthy, original and overly familiar – and ultimately serves as little more than a metaphor for possibly the Americans moving into Iraq for the oil, the British pushing the Native Americans off their land – or possibly, more simply, he’s suggesting that having destroyed our own planet, we’ll have to find others to pull apart. Once we get past the initial conceit of the cloned Avatar, controlled by the sleeping human, there are very few fresh themes here, so in truth, its chief entertainment value is marvelling at its technical wizardry.)

How the story unfolds (***)

The characters (***)

Technical wizardry (****)

It’s a shame that the story-telling isn’t better--I hope that Cameron acknowledges that most of his effort has gone into the more successful visual elements of a movie than the plot. But sometimes a movie is worth seeing just to feel absorbed by another world--don’t worry about getting drawn in on an emotional level--just enjoy the visuals, the effects, the creatures. This is a movie where it’s worth paying a little extra for the extra dimension.

Overall rating *** out of 4 stars