THE LAST AIRBENDER.

Perhaps I'm grasping at straws here, or perhaps I'm in serious denial, but... it wasn't a complete rape of one of my favorite shows. The Last Airbender follows Book 1 (season 1) of the show. In this world, there are people who can control the four elements--air, water, earth, and fire--known as benders. There is only one who can control all four elements, and this person is the link between the human world and the spirit world. This person is known as the Avatar. 100 years ago, the Avatar disappeared and the Fire Nation began a war on the rest of the world, slowly taking it over. But a young Waterbender named Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her warrior brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover the Avatar, an Airbender named Aang (Noah Ringer), frozen in the outskirts of their Water Tribe village. Eventually, they discover that they must travel to the Northern Water Tribe so that Aang may master Waterbending before moving on to Earth and then Fire, as he must defeat the Fire Nation and restore balance. However, along the way, he is pursued by the banished Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) and his Uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub), as well as Commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi). Zuko must capture the Avatar if he is to regain his honor, but Zhao will not have any of this, and vows to find the Avatar first.

On paper, they pretty much got the basic plot of the first season down. There are only a couple changes here and there (strangely almost entirely dealing with the Fire Nation, such as how they control fire, Sozin's Comet, and even Avatar Roku). But what they missed in this adaptation was the show's heart. The characters aren't very endearing, nor do you care a whole lot about them. For instance, Uncle Iroh stays pretty true to his cartoon counterpart... except for his whimsicality. In fact, the entire movie was missing the whimsy of the show. And I think that was one of its biggest flaws. There was hardly any comedy. Everything was taken seriously to an absurd amount. Aang wasn't particularly carefree, nor did he hardly smile. Sokka was used to comedic effect maybe twice in the whole movie, and only mostly thanks to Katara--who herself was turned into a bit of a worrisome girl. They could have even given some good stuff to Appa or Momo, but Momo is mostly in the background with nothing to do except offer fan service (you only hear his name once in the whole movie, and it's like a 'blink and you miss it' kinda thing... except for ears). Appa has one attempt at comedy with Sokka near the very beginning, but even then it was so painfully contrived that it wasn't funny whatsoever.

I think part of this has to do with a mixture of things. First, there's the dark and brooding music that plays throughout the movie. Like the aforementioned Appa/Sokka moment, the serious music takes away from the moment, leaving you unsure whether or not you should be laughing. The other issue is that, besides Zuko and Iroh, there are no simple character moments. Everything is BAM plot point BAM plot point BAM plot point. Granted, I'm aware they had to shorten an entire season into one movie, but they put in some pretty unnecessary things. The rescuing of the Earth Kingdom villages? While fun, I suppose, it wasn't necessary, and took up a decent chunk of time that could have been used for character-building. At the very least, they could have tossed in Suki, who was supposed to be in the movie, but was apparently cut. M. Night really chose some strange episodes to keep in that really took away from what could have otherwise been useful time for other things.

I also wanted to briefly bring up the controversy that has been dubbed "RaceBending." This is based on the issue that M. Night nearly white-washed the entire cast. After a while, I just didn't care anymore. I figure that if the actors could pull off the roles, it'd be OK. Whatever. I was just tired of hearing about it. But here's the problem... they didn't pull off the roles. Granted, I'm not exactly sure how much of that is the actors' faults and how much of it is the script and M. Night's faults. There was some pretty rough dialogue, mostly consisting of moments of pure exposition, which happened incredibly often. There were times when I could actually see M. Night going "OK, what's a creative way I could toss in some exposition without it seeming like exposition? Oh, I've got it! I'll just have Zuko ask this random boy about the Prince... that way I can get out Zuko's backstory in a creative way." Except it was already done in a creative way... on the show... in an amazing episode called "The Storm"... which gave all the necessary backstory to both Aang and Zuko without having to spread it out strangely throughout the rest of the movie.

But the movie wasn't all bad. As I said at the beginning, it didn't completely rape one of my favorite shows. There were some stunning visual effects (like, totally Oscar-worthy here... which isn't surprising considering that the main guy involved has won many times before, if I'm not mistaken). And the action scenes are really good. They actually captured the bending stuff really well. But even some of the non-bending action is good, too, like the Blue Spirit scene, which was probably one of the better moments of the movie. Between the visuals of the bending and the action scenes, there were some pretty stunning shots. And there were even a few more gorgeous shots during non-bending/action scenes. Some of the set pieces (like the Northern Water Tribe) are amazing. Also, Dev Patel and Shaun Toub were pretty good as Zuko and Iroh, respectively... at least for what they were given. And it was no shock to hear that they were M. Night's favorite characters, considering they were given the best treatment in this movie.

Overall, I tried to be as fair as possible in this review, looking at aspects of it as an adaptation and as a movie for people who are not familiar with the source material. As an adaptation, it failed pretty bad. It kept moderately faithful plot-wise, but missed the heart and soul of the source, becoming too serious and lackluster... almost feeling as if it lost its purpose... like it was just going through the motions. As a film for those unfamiliar with the source, it's... well... lackluster, like it has no purpose and was just going through the motions. Sure the visuals and the action are pretty good, but you still need compelling characters for an epic adventure like this... and Zuko is only gonna take you so far. So in other words, as a non-adaptation, it was moderately entertaining, though horribly forgettable. In other words, the very definition of "painfully average." So if I were to mix my "average" score with the adaptation's, well, not-so-good score... you'll get my final score:


Feed Me, Seymour!

(P.S. And we're talking probably the lower-end of that score... though is it sad that I still want the other 2 made? Maybe if M. Night just produces or something and another writer/director come on? They just have so much potential... and that last 30 seconds or so with Azula was fantastic!)

(P.P.S. I think one of the biggest slaps in the face, though, is the fact that almost nobody's name is pronounced correctly. Avatar, Aang, Sokka, Iroh... it's ridiculous. For somebody who claims to be a major fan of the show, M. Night should have known better...)

(P.P.P.S. For more of an in-depth analysis of the show and this movie, stay tuned for the next episode of The Demented Encyclopedia, due this weekend!)

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

I’ve been waiting longer than you know to see this movie. And now I finally have. And my verdict? I’ll get to that. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is a basic love story/pseudo-fairy tale told in a very entertaining and creative way. Jamal (Ayush Khedekar, Tanay Chheda, Dev Patel) and his brother Salim (Azharuddin Ismail, Ashutosh Gajiwala, Madhur Mittal) live in the slums of Mumbai. But after an attack on the city, they become orphans to survive on their own. They then meet Latika (Rubiana Ali, Tanvi Lonkar, Freida Pinto) who he comes to fall for, even as a young child. They go through many hardships together, sometimes even becoming separated for long periods of time. All of this eventually culminates in Jamal becoming a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But something has to be wrong, because this boy from the slums is answering all these questions correctly when even doctors and lawyers couldn’t get as far as he had. So, one question at a time, Jamal must explain himself to the authorities how he knew each and every answer, all of which is shown in a series of flashbacks.

So what did I think of the film? Well, I saw two of my old professors there and we talked briefly afterward. I asked them what they thought, and they said it all in one word: brilliant. Everything about this film was brilliant. Let’s look at it one bit at a time, though. First we have the story. It was always the story that attracted me to the film, even before it started to get all its praise. And it turned out even more than I expected. The juxtaposition of stories between Jamal and Salim and how each turned out (one rising from the slums in the quintessential rags-to-riches story, and the other sinking down into its depths, stuck in its gnawing teeth and dastardly ways) was very unexpected. And the symbolism at the end there (to try and keep this vague and non-spoilery… themes of love and unwanted money) all converged tightly in the apex of the film. And while the final question was rather obvious (but still got a nice “OH!” reaction from the audience), you still had no idea if he was going to answer it correctly (because it was never about winning in that sense).

On the more technical side of things, I loved the frenetic camera work (which was more at the beginning and the end). And it mixed in nicely with the music. And on the subject of the music, I absolutely adored the soundtrack. This was probably one of my favorite soundtracks (at least of a non-musical) of this past year. The music fit so perfectly with every scene, always adding energy or dramatics.

As for the acting, well, it was great all around. I think the move to use real slum kids from Mumbai was (again) brilliant. For just being random kids off the street, they sure did a fantastic job with their parts, especially the youngest versions of Jamal and Salim. For the adult roles, of course Dev Patel shines through as the deeply longing and sometimes snarky Jamal. And Freida Pinto is incredibly hot. And she looks so much like Dilshad Vadsaria (who plays Rebecca Logan on the TV show “Greek”), who is also hot.

It’s really hard to review films you love in almost every way, because you get to that place where you don’t want to gush too much and it’s hard to find anything negative. If I did have anything negative at all to say, it would be that at times, some of the English was hard to understand because of the thick accents. But that only happened so few times (most of it toward the beginning of the film, which worried me at first, but that quickly went away). I do disagree with those people who say the movie is too straightforward with not many deeper levels. I found plenty of deeper levels, metaphors, etc. all throughout the film; you just have to know where to look. So my love of the film just continually built more and more until by the end of the movie, I had the exactly feelings within me that I had hoped to have in watching this movie: I had just watched something great, and I felt really good about that.

Royale With Cheese