Youre a bender, and youll always be a bender, says one character in the Last Airbender. Yep, its time for the worst-reviewed film of the year, with some of the most laugh-out-loud dialogue of the decade. Yet, for all of its flaws of which there are many The Last Airbender is not in fact the worst film of the year. Its no good, but not the complete disaster many would have you to believe for that look no further than Knight And Day.
M Night Shyamalan has track record that is definitely heading south fast, but even The Happening had a germ of an idea in there, it was the poor execution which let it down. The Last Airbender suffers from similar problems there is a mildly entertaining theme in there somewhere, buried under some poor special effects, wooden acting and of course that terrible dialogue, with a stubborn resistance to change the title. Any film that insists on using the word benders so consistently deserves every schoolboy smirk it gets.
The world is divided into four elements, but the fire benders stop laughing at the back have decided to go it alone to achieve world domination, led by Prince Zuko (Dev Patel of Slumdog fame). The only man who can stop them is an Avatar oh gawd who turns out to be a cryogenically frozen boy who has been asleep for 100 years, and discovers all of his fellow monks have been slain. He teams up with the locals from a small Eskimo tribe to fight the mighty fire warriors. Or something like that.
The film is based on a popular childrens animated series, and if taken in that spirit it spins a story well enough for about an hour. Shyamalan has absolutely no idea how to direct actors he gets stilted performances out of all of his leads and here, with a cast of basically kids, is no exception. He also is the most humourless man on planet earth, the jokes here are teeth-grindingly bad. The visuals too are dull, the colour turned down by the absurd current obsession with 3D, which adds little to the film. And yet, and yet, and yet there are a few decent kung-fu fights, a couple of nice moments, and the story does sort of work itself out in the end. Patel, who charmed us all in Slumdog, still looks like a sixth form student, but he does his best as the evil fire warrior, and his steam-powered ship is a thing of gothic beauty. He actually isnt on screen for that long, so no blame can be attached to him.
Visually and thematically the film bears a striking resemblance to The Golden Compass, another film made from a childrens source featuring lots of snow-bound exteriors, giant woolly animals and lots of fights with bizarre weapons. At least here the giant animal doesnt talk like Ian McKellen. Compass was a box-office disaster as well, but nowhere near as bad as many thought and wrote at the time. This is not as good as Compass take that any way you want and will probably flop on a similar level. Taken on a certain level though its reasonably well made kids entertainment. Who knows though, it may just be the film that wears out everybodys patience with Shyamalan.
Overall verdict: The film was critically mauled in the US for completely understandable reasons, but which has glimpses of charm and visual sweep buried under some awful dialogue and wooden performances.
Reviewer: Mike Martin