No one cares, but here is what I think of Avatar…

My husband and I had a 3D movie extravaganza date last Friday.  I took the day off and while our son was at daycare, we decided to catch two movies.  First, Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D, lunch and then Avatar in 3D.  We hadn’t been to the movies in almost a year since we had a baby last April, so we were overdue.

Alice in Wonderland was fun.  I loved the costume design and was thoroughly creeped out by the looks of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter.  I didn’t enjoy Anne Hathaway as the White Queen because I just don’t care for her as an actress.  Her role in this film just reinforced my feelings.  I felt she was the weakest actor in the cast.  On the flip side of things, I thought Helena Bohnam Carter was fantastic as the Queen of Hearts.

I am not in anyway a digital effects expert, but I found the weakest CGI was found on Crispin Glover’s character the Knave of Heart.  The character is very tall–mostly notably in the legs.  From what I have read, Glover was on stilts during the filming of his scenes to help give him that tall, long look but CGI was used too round out the visuals of the character.  I feel like that character never looked grounded as he moved–he didn’t feel heavy enough to me which totally brought me out of the movie.  Now this could have been intentional to add to the wacky world of Wonderland, and I hope it was.  I hope it was a choice and not animators being so overwhelmed with all of the other visual effects that they half-assed the Knave.

But anyway…

On to Avatar.

Let me first start by saying that my expectations for this film were low.  The more something is hyped in the media, the less I want to be a part of it.

And I dislike James Cameron.

And I didn’t like the looks of those blue creature things.

Overall, I was rather unimpressed with Avatar.

Yes, the technology behind creating the film is amazing.  I will definitely give you that.  However, the script written by James Cameron himself was predictable and boring.  The characters were stereotypical and stale.  The only character I even remotely cared about was Nytiri because she showed convincing emotion.  There were a few decent actors in the cast–like Sigourney Weaver and Giovanni Ribisi, but still they were awful.  The characters had no depth because the script sucked.

And it was long.  So long that one dude in the fourth row was snoring, loudly, for the last hour of the two hour and forty minute movie.  And we were seeing this film at 1pm.

So yeah for me, Avatar gets a big ol’ thumbs down.

And one more thing that bothered me about Avatar:  It takes place in the year 2154, right?  Why the hell is Sigourney Weaver’s character smoking cigarettes?!

Okay.  I’m done.

Tags: acting, Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, movies