By Lee Pfeiffer
Remember when a new film by director M. Night Shyamalan was perceived as an actual event? Films like The Sixth Sense, Signs and The Village gave his movies the aura of something special - and audiences anticipated being brought in unpredictable directions by the compelling storylines. Nowadays, Shyamalan is content to take the Nicholas Cage career path and trash his talents in return for a sizable paycheck. Shyamalan is now down to adapting cartoon series to the big screen with The Last Airbender, an effects-filled extravaganza designed to appeal to audiences who are glued to the fare on Saturday morning kid's TV stations. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott blasts the film in his review, saying "It’s all pretty silly, and handled with unrelenting solemnity. But
that in itself is neither unusual nor fatal. The problem — the
catastrophe — of “The Last Airbender†is not in the conception but the
execution. The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made
worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks
whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there. The movie is so dim and fuzzy that you might mistake your
disposable 3-D glasses for someone else’s prescription shades. And Mr.
Shyamalan’s fondness for shallow-focus techniques, with a figure in the
foreground presented with sharp clarity against a blurred background, is
completely out of place in the deep-focus world of modern 3-D. The
format also has no place for one of this director’s major gifts, which
is his ability to use the implications of what is off camera to create a
mood of intrigue and suspense." For full review click here