Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "'The Last Airbender' is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that."Previously: our "Lady in the Water" turkey shoot; Fienberg on the greatest line in "The Happening"; the time in June 2008 when I said "What I'd like to see is simple: Shyamalan directing someone else's script. He is a great visual stylist -- and (with a significant assist from composer James Newton Howard) a fantastic creator and sustainer of mood -- who is fallen by his own dumbass script decisions. (Really: "Those We Don't Speak Of"?) If someone were to take away some of that decisionmaking from him and allow Shyamalan to focus on what he does well, I think some fantastic films could result."
Tony Scott, NYT: "'The Last Airbender'? Let’s hope so, though there is a scene at the very end that gestures toward a sequel. After 94 minutes — was that all? I could have sworn it was days — of muddy 3-D imagery and muddled storytelling, the idea that this is just the first'“Last Airbender' seems either delusionally optimistic or downright cruel. An astute industry analyst of my acquaintance, who is 9 and an admirer of the Nickelodeon animated series on which the movie is based, offered a two-word diagnosis of its commercial prospects on the way out of the theater: 'They’re screwed.'"
Keith Phipps, AV Club: "A lot of headache-inducing CGI-effects sequences, many scenes of children doing tai chi, and some imperiled magical fish.... Shyamalan lets his unimpressive special effects do the work for him while coaxing performances from his young cast that make Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace look studied. (Star Noah Ringer, who plays a messianic figure who might unite the warring forces, delivers his lines as if reading a book report, and his older co-stars don’t fare much better.)"
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: "Shyamalan compresses a ton of plot exposition in every line and the resulting heavyosity is too much for the younger actors to carry. At many points I was reminded of Harrison Ford's crack to George Lucas on the set of Star Wars: 'You can type this [stuff], George, but you sure can't say it.'"
Oops. [Added: Double oops. I actually thought he didn't write this script. He did. My bad.]
He did write this script. Right? So your theory remains untested. And if this keeps up, it probably always will remain so.
ReplyDeleteHe wrote the screenplay, but it's an adaptation of a previously existing work (the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender series, which aired to considerable acclaim on Nickelodeon a few years back), so kind of a middle ground.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I'm familiar with the original series and its reception. I was actually surprised to learn that they had him direct AND write. I would have thought this would be a good opportunity to see what he could do with someone else's script. Then again, based on the reviews and the years-long controversy over the casting, in the end bad writing was just the tip of the iceberg.
ReplyDeleteWas anyone else unfortunate enough to see Wide Awake?
ReplyDeleteJSG: Yes, me. It is apparently a little-known fact that MNS made two stinkers BEFORE The Sixth Sense.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but no matter how bad the films he makes may be, M. Night Shyalaman is still one of the best names in all of film. I don't mean that his legacy is so compelling that he deserves a pass at whatever he wants to do like a Hanks or Spielberg*, but that he has a perfect name for his line of work. Whose name rolls off a trailer announcer's tongue better than M. Night Shyalaman?
ReplyDelete*This could be an interesting discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with The Last Airbender or M. Night, who has proven to be a hack who made one good film: whose work is generally excellent enough to deserve a free pass for whatever they want to do? When talking about the Grown-Ups, I'm willing to give Sandler the benefit of the doubt with whatever he wants to do, because even for all of the crap he's worked on, he still gave us Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, Don't Mess with the Zohan and Funny People. After Big, Toy Story, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Philadelphia, Joe vs. the Volcano, From the Earth to the Moon, That Thing You Do, The Pacific and whatever else I'm forgetting off the top of my head, Tom Hanks could do another 5 sequels to The Da Vinci Code and it wouldn't take away from his status.
My husband and I just had a discussion about M. Night Shymalan in the Philadelphia airport. We were on the people mover going past the posters of movies filmed in Philadelphia. I agree with Andrew -- I think he's a hack who made one really good movie, which unfortunately was the first time most of us had heard of him. So we assigned some sort of genius to him based on that one movie, and we are now paying the sad, steep price for it with each movie being worse than the last.
ReplyDeleteIn the category of excellent enough to get a free pass -- maybe Samuel L. Jackson? He's been in a LOT of crap, but Pulp Fiction alone could atone for a multitude of Snakes on a Plane.
We had the lifetiime pass discussion whenever the Fat Albert movie came out, because I gave Bill Cosby one. We can do again that later this summer.
ReplyDeleteAs mediocre as Da Vinci and Angels and Demons were (and Angels and Demons was considerably better than Da Vinci was, though Lost Symbol is an order of magnitude worse), Hanks hasn't done much that really justifies him needing to play the lifetime pass card.
ReplyDeleteKevin Spacey needs a lifetime pass, but he hasn't earned one yet.
ReplyDeleteMaybe not a lifetime pass yet, but George Clooney seems to be on the road to one. At the very least, he's on the short list of actors whose movies I'll see even if they aren't quite my cup of tea, simply because he's in it.
ReplyDeleteSame goes for Hanks, of course. Although even my love of Tom Hanks could not convince me to watch more than five minutes of The DaVinci Code and nothing will ever bring me to watch the The Green Mile (it just looks so depressing).
I give him two good films -- I believe Adam agrees with me that Unbreakable is very good, but misunderstood. It was a superhero origin story movie that took its subject matter (both content and medium) seriously and wasn't freighted with fanboy-politics issues about fidelity to the original. Signs was also half a good movie with a stupid, derivative ending.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot to loathe in The Village (Adrien Brody's performance and several deus ex machina moments), but there's a lot of good stuff in there as well--in particular, Bryce Dallas Howard has a nice performance, and the central concept about an attempt to escape violence is provocative.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Joaquin Phoenix looks hot in The Village. And in Signs.
ReplyDeleteMatt I agree with you re: the concepts behind some of his films being interesting. The whole fear of death/unwilling to accept it theme in The Sixth Sense, the villagers attempt to hide from reality and form some sort of simpler life in The Village, and um, for Signs, uh, something with faith, maybe? Or oh, did I mention Joaquin Phoenix looked hot in that movie? Because he did.
I haven't seen an M. Night movie since I flipped off the dvd of Signs in disgust at the sight of an officer of the "Bucks County Police Department" referring to people who "are not from around here." Which makes sense in describing a county that has more people than Wyoming, Vermont, and probably North Dakota after the next census.
ReplyDeleteLIfetime pass? Bill Groundhog Day Ghostbusting Ass Murray.