Movie Review: The Last Airbender

by KYW's Bill Wine

Maybe M. Night Shyamalan's sixth sense about child performers has deserted him.

The thought occurs because the acting by most of the young principals in the auteur's latest adventure thriller, The Last Airbender, is so wooden that we get splinters just watching.

Where's Haley Joel Osment when you really need him?

The Last Airbender is writer-producer-director Shyamalan's first foray into big-budget franchise moviemaking, a project aimed squarely at children and families that is being marketed via Happy Meals, among other items.  It's an epic fantasy involving mysticism and martial arts that's intended as the first installment of a projected trilogy.

As a live-action adaptation of the animated television series "Avatar: The Last Airbender," it has had its first word jettisoned for obvious reasons. What remains is a lavishly mounted bore, a movie with the narrative urgency and emotional impact of a picnic fireworks display.

In this film, Fire -- one of four nations in a mythical world we never cotton to -- declares war on the other three: Air, Water, and Earth.

Newcomer Noah Ringer (above) stars as Aang, a gifted but reluctant 12-year-old hero and a successor in a long line of Avatars, legendary creatures who can command -- that is, bend -- all four elements.  At least, that's what he should be able to do.

But it turns out, because he left home early, that he has only learned how to bend air.  Notwithstanding his prodigious martial art skills, he'll have to get some help and learn to bend water, earth, and fire from others.

And that means that his responsibility to restore and maintain harmony and balance in this war-torn allegorical world will be that much more difficult.

Accompanied and assisted by brother and sister Sokka and Katara of the Water tribe, played respectively by Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz, Aang must unite the Air, Water, and Earth nations against the genocidal Fire Lord, who seeks to enslave them in the name of the imperialistic Fire Nation.

Meanwhile, Aang is being hunted by a disgraced Fire prince played by Slumdog Millionaire's Deb Patel.

Boy, getting the Aang of this save-the-world stuff and being everybody's only hope is no breeze, is it?

As is the case in just about all of Shyamalan's films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, The Happening), the script has a spiritual side and that's fine.  But as it rushes us from place to place, it offers enough exposition to choke a flying horse.

Worse, the youthful cast lacks the finesse to sell it.

There is unmistakable technical proficiency on display and several gracefully choreographed martial arts sequences. But because there is nothing whatsoever compelling about the characters, the relationships, or the narrative itself, we are never captivated, never involved, never engaged.

Smart-looking sets abound. Those and a dime...

Come to think of it, whether the special effects stand out and impress because they're so adroitly managed and effective or because the childish (as opposed to childlike) story they're part of and the overly earnest line readings and emoting by the ensemble cast reacting to them is so pedestrian is an issue that might be worth thinking about during one of the film's many dead spots.

After the film was already shot -- and it's the first film he has made that wasn't based on his own idea -- Shyamalan consented to its conversion to the 3-D process, given the commercial success that nearly all the films recently released in 3-D have had.  So it's in 3-D.   Ho hum.

If it wasn't already obvious that Shyamalan is using The LastAirbender to set up at least one sequel, the film's final scene removes any doubt.  Probably a good career move.  But this is one major misstep of a movie.

So we'll bend 2 stars out of 4 for the intended franchise launcher, The Last Airbender, a leaden head-scratcher in which M. Night Shyamalan loses us while parading as the fast plotbender.