The Last Airbender

Okay, kids movie for sure as it stars kids...for the most part and then sprinkled with adults who are all M. Night Shyamalan's brothers, uncles, etc.  Because it is mostly kids, you can't expect a ton out of the acting but the effects rock!  Just out of curiousity, why is that European kids always seem to be better actors than US kids?  Whatever and no worry.  Okay, so the dealio is that there are 4 elements and there are benders.  Benders are folks who can manipulate an element into shapes and potentially weapons.  So, a fire bender can, as long as the source is nearby, take fire, make it into a ball, missile or whatever and either light his hash pipe or toss it at you and cook you.  Hopefully, if after lighting a hash pipe, he is a happy stoner and not a mean one. 

The 4 elements have logically divided the world into 4 nations.  3 of them, water, air, and earth are cool with each other, but heavens no, not with the fire people.  Those hot headed bastards and just that, hot headed bastards and (I smell Satan somewhere) they want to just cruise around and dominate everyone.  Now, the Last Airbender (and some monk type kid named Aang played by Noah Ringer who would be a dead Ringer if he had been offed in the movie) has the ability to manipulate all 4 elements.  He is the only person who can do this and therefore the last hope of the 3 mellow elemental people to keep harmony in the world.  The only issue is that like any young kid, he played hooky to go smoke cigarettes or something instead of training and fully mastering the art of "bending" all four elements.  Long story short, he masters the stuff just in time to put off a massive onslaught by the fire folks.

M. Night Shyamalan has not really put something out that has been quite a amazing as the "6th Sense."  All good though, as much crap as folks have given him about this film, the directing wasn't that bad.  The cinematography was great.  I totally dug that and the effects.  I already commented on the acting so no more on that.  The script, well, the best script in the world spoken by frogs would blow, so because the vessels through which the words flowed was not the most polished, well, I didn't really notice the script adding or detracting.  The movie could have been done in Swahili and I still would have been able to follow it.  Slumdog Milly O Naire (just how the Indian Regis Philbin pronounced it) lead Dev Patel was in this which is cool.  He did a good job in that and, actually, was (if you consider him a kid) a pretty good actor here.

See this with your kids and make sure you don't do it in theaters unless it is still in them and a matinee.  Not bad, not bad.