My Not-Very-Informative Review of Avatar

Saturday afternoon, I finally dragged Ed with me to see Avatar. I knew the plot wasn't supposed to be that great, but it was supposed to be really pretty. It was indeed quite pretty and the plot was more offensive than I'd imagined, but not as bad otherwise.

We saw it in 3D. It is, as others have mentioned, not very flashy 3D - arrows don't come whizzing out at your head or anything like that. But it was nice to see the depth, and little details, like the 3D displays on people's computer screens in the movie, excited me from time to time. The 3D made my eyes feel slightly tired by the end, and gave Ed a bad headache.

The movie is definitely racially offensive in a wide variety of ways, but I found it easy to overlook while actually watching it. The action was enjoyable despite my not being a fan of action movies. And I really did enjoy the alien world and the aliens themselves. The aliens are more attractive when they move than they look in regular pictures.

I did have trouble identifying with the main character, who is a hero man in the stupid/impulsive/brave/doesn't-take-directions mold. Given that I'm smart, extremely chicken, and a careful listener, I often don't sympathize with the choices made by such men. But then, that's why they don't send me to Pandora to be eaten by the first clawy thing that comes along.

One detail that doesn't come up as often as you'd expect is that the aliens are humanoid but about twice as tall as humans. I was surprisingly moved and excited by a scene in which the main human is tenderly picked up by his alien girlfriend. I'd love to be twice as tall as Ed (you know, assuming this didn't cause a lot of other problems).

As an experience, the movie was worth seeing. I would even see it again pretty happily if I knew anyone who wanted to go.