>The Last Airbender
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi, Cliff Curtis
Rating: (PG)
3 stars (out of 5)
Review by Christine Powley
The Last Airbender (Rialto and Hoyts) started life as a children's anime on American kids' channel Nickelodeon.
As such it has scores of mini-fans, while leaving the rest of the population oblivious. Director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) normally works from his own scripts and is best known for his signature twist endings.
While there is plenty of evidence that he loves and understands this story, he is not the right director for it.
His talent is for hiding the obvious, while here there is nothing to hide.
The Last Airbender has plenty of faults.
Shyamalan seems unable to give us a clear shot, wasting all the meticulous art direction.
The dialogue is stilted.
We race through the plot in a choppy fashion.
Finally, this is an "and yet" movie - one where you list all the faults and still find yourself saying, "and yet".
There is something here that makes me like it anyway.
What The Last Airbender has is a great story and, even mauled and truncated, it survives.
Best thing: There is a sequence where Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) has captured Aang (Noah Ringer), the last airbender in their world, and unable to contain himself, pours out his troubles to the unconscious boy. Then they fight and Aang's fighting style shows all the mischief and spirit of a young boy. It is the one place where you get a sense of just how good this could have been.
Worst thing: The purist fans were always going to be crushingly disappointed.
See it with: The mindset of an 8-year-old boy.
