** - It is almost certainly a bad omen when the most enjoyable parts of a movie were the completely innocent and highly humorous spouting of lines such as “he’s a bender!” and “I knew you were a bender” by numerous characters to each other. You see, in the this M. Night Shyamalan sci-fi/fantasy film (which is apparently based on some weird-ass Japanese cartoon series) a “bender” is not a gay man, but actually is someone from one of the Four Nations (Earth, Air, Water and Fire) that has the ability to telekinetically control that nation’s element, sort of like using The Force. It sounds kind of neat in theory (although I would have certainly considered not using the term ‘bender’ had I been in charge), but in practice it is actually very lame, due largely to the fact that to, say, fling a ball of fire at someone, it requires a lengthy string of odd martial arts poses, during which time you are easy prey for arrows or swords or any other sort of ranged or melee attack. It is a very inefficient superpower, and comes off really lame in the fight sequences in this film. In addition to that, the acting (by a mostly child/teenage group) was extremely poor, the dialogue was dopey, the story was heavy on narration and the plot seemed to jump all over the place. On the bright side, the special effects were pretty good and the scenery was spectacular, but that’s not enough to pull this one off the scrap heap.
No comments:
Post a Comment