The Last Airbender

Nickelodeon had a nice hit with its anime series Avatar: The Last Airbender, so it stands to reason that it would take the franchise to the big screen. What doesn’t make much sense is handing your huge action epic to M. Night Shyamalan, who has seemingly forgotten how to make a movie since his excellent Signs. I felt embarrassed for the guy watching this movie. While it’s certainly a good-looking movie for the most part, this is yet another Shyamalan film where everybody, and I mean everybody, sounds ridiculous. The actors talk as if they are the voices in a Japanese film dubbed in English … the only problem being the film is in English. They just overstate everything, and it doesn’t look like their voices match their bodies. It’s almost as if Shyamalan told his performers to act like cartoon characters because this thing is based on a cartoon. The plot involves some nonsense about a 12-year-old kid who can harness water, fire and wind. Characters basically stand around delivering ridiculous speeches about the kid’s powers, but all he really does is splash people with water and knock them down on occasion. The cartoon was interesting; this is garbage.