1/10
Great news. I think I've just seen the worst film of all time. Why is that good news? Obvious. That means that all other films in the future are going to be better than this. Hooray!
Ever since The Sixth Sense, M Night Shyamalan has single handedly embarked on a quest to make the title of Hollywood's Worst Film Director his very own. Congratulations, M. The trophy is yours for life. You have to admire the guy. Each time you think he's made a film so bad it can't be improved on (Lady In The Water, The Happening), he comes up with a bigger stinker than the last one. And this new one has the added bonus of being so dull that you will achieve a sense of The Timelessness Of Being for less than £10.
Strictly from a sense of duty I will attempt to describe the plot to you, then prod you in the ribs to wake you up again. A brother and sister are wandering around in the frozen wastes when they come across a bald kid underneath the ice. When they rescue him, they discover that he is both Airbender and Avatar (the title the film would have had if JC hadn't already nicked it). The world is divided into the four elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire), and the Firebenders are the bad guys (of Indian extraction like Shyamalan) who want to rule the world. Pay attention, there'll be a quiz at the end of the paragraph. The junior Avatar and the brother and sister (all characters have names like multinationals - Zuco, Katara, Sokka and Iroh) journey across the world on the back of a large furry creature who makes a noise like Chewbacca. The bad guys chase them, and every now and then everyone stops to bend whichever element is their speciality against each other. If you're an airbender, you wave your arms around and blow the bad guys off their feet; for water you do the same thing, and either freeze or soak your opponent. You get the idea.
The film is a testament to the single inviolable truth of all films. You have to have a good script. This film has a script that was presumably written by a five year old. And that's an insult to five year olds. The dialogue is so wooden, you need a carpenter to listen to it. And it can't be coincidental that there are no actors that even I have never heard of, apart from Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire, who should sack his agent on the spot. Let me just emphasise once more - this film is very very very dull. Mind-numbingly, soul-destroyingly, absolutely and totally dreadful. Don't watch it even if it turns up on ITV 4 on a wet Wednesday afternoon in ten years time.
