'The Last Airbender'

'The Last Airbender' (PG) (1 star)

Writer and Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Screenplay based on Anime series
Starring: Dev Patel, Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Cliff Curtis, John D. Alonzo, Summer Bishil

"The Last Airbender" brought back past nightmares from my childhood. No, nothing scary but it brought me back to one of my worst movie going experiences I ever had. In 1984, David Lynch assaulted our imaginations with the big screen adaptation of "Dune". I really hate that ugly looking, flat, boring, badly acted and goofy fantasy film. It is probably if not the worst, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I finally found a movie pretty much equal to that travesty and it is maybe signaling the end of greatness for director M. Night Shyamalan. "The Last Airbender" is painful to sit through, insipid, unintentionally funny and badly acted. It seems to think it looks beautiful with it's cinematography but it looks flat and ugly. M. Night really shocked Hollywood with one of the most successful thrillers ever in "The Sixth Sense". It was a movie deserving of it's success because it was a brilliantly filmed thriller. I also loved "Signs" and I have defended M. Night against others for his under rated and clever movie "Unbreakable". He is famous for the twist ending and it became ridiculous with his terrible turkeys "The Village" and "Lady in the Water". "The Last Airbender" doesn't have a trick ending but I can't believe I would prefer a movie with his twist ending specialty than this laughable turkey.

"The Last Airbender" is based on an anime television series on Nickelodeon. It would have been a smarter move to keep this story in animation, it might have been much better. All I can say is that it is about a kid and others who can bend air, water, fire and earth to master them or something. The movie is terrible in explaining it's plot for it is confusing and excruciating to follow. The special effects are cheesy and M. Night has appeared to forget how to construct a movie. There are a bunch of unknown child actors and they can't act at all. The dialogue is short sentence grunting and laughable. I have seen old martial arts films, the ones with the bad dubbing, that are masterpieces compared to this crap. I was bored, annoyed and uncomfortable and I was about to fall asleep. The action sequences are a mess and there is no humor, none at all! I would expect a few funny moments wouldn't you? It is so somber and serious with itself that I swear the makers of this movie think they are being profound. Has Hollywood forgotten that the summer blockbuster should be joyful, fun and exciting? First "Robin Hood" then "The A Team" and now this horrible exercise in tedium, pretentious and heavy handed hooey. Please, someone rescue me from this pompous crap, give me a fun, mindless summer movie! To make things more insulting is that the movie was shot in 2-D and transferred like other movies now into 3-D. So we are being charged extra to watch a movie that wasn't shot in 3-D just so the studio can make more money. I wouldn't be that pissed off if I was sitting through a movie that wasn't embarrassing and pathetic.