Panned by the critics when it was released, I finally watched The Last Airbender this morning on my streaming Netflix account.
The last M. Night Shyamalan movie, Netflix ranked it as the most popular movie of the day.
I watched it. And it wasn't half-bad. In fact, it was better than bad. It was pretty good.
A take-off of the popular children's animation series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the story is about a world where four countries are at war. Once held together by the peaceful reign of a single avatar that controlled the 4 elements--earth, wind, air and fire--the avatar disappeared and war began. Each country has a breed of benders that can shift the elements of their country. Only the avatar, who can bend all four, can bring them peace. Suddenly, he returns, ready to bring them back to peace.
The movie stars Noah Ringer, as the last airbender, Dev Patel, as the wronged fire prince.
With awesome special effects and some great martial arts, the movie was produced by two of the TV shows producers and long-time Hollywood producer Kathleen Kennedy. She got her start with Steven Spielberg on his production of E.T.
The story of a young girl who returns to her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, she aspires to become a writer.
While her friends titter around the bridge table, she begins to ask the town's maids to tell their stories.
Civil riots are breaking out in Mississippi, one of the worst states in the country. The maids, afraid for their jobs, their families and their lives, decide to risk all to tell the town's secrets.
The movie stars Easy A's Emma Stone as Skeeter, the wide-eyed journalist. The two central maids are played by Doubt's Viola Davis and Spiderman's Octavia Spenser and give scene-stealing performances. Octavia, in fact, really steals the show.
A superb cast, the catty queen bee, Hilly Holbrook, is played by Ron Howard's baby girl, Bryce Dallas Howard. Jessica Chastain, from Tree of Life, is charming as the ditzy, white trash bombshell. And Allison Janney is wonderful as Skeeter's mother.
All in all, it was well done and not too smarmy.
My only concern is that some may think that this is based in fact. Although the notion is real and these types of incidents did occur, no book, entitled "The Help", was ever published in 1963.
And the most interesting factoid? One of the executive producers was Mohamed Khalaf Al-Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Company, and Nate Berkus, a designer and Oprah protege.
This is a sharp, snarky romcom that takes a look at today's high school culture that, despite its 21st century facade of liberalism, has an untapped, hidden puritanical agenda.
A modern-day twist on The Scarlet Letter, Emma Stone plays Olive, who belongs to the invisible clique--the kind of girl who goes unnoticed.
Until one day, she makes up a whollop of a tale to get out of going on a camping trip with her best friend's bizarre family. She tells a tale of her own deflowering, which then spreads like wildfire through out the school, turning her into the school skank.
The next thing Olive knows, she is getting propositioned by nerd-boys to pretend to sleep with them so that their own reputation will be enhanced.
Funny, sad and full of teen-age angst, I was pleased at how smart it was. Probably one of my favorite scenes was when they did a montage tribute to all the great John Hughes movies.
Thomas Hadyn Church, Lisa Kudrow, Sam Tucci and Patricia Clarkson brought some great talent to the table.
They have a built-in bias against chick flicks. It really is annoying. I wish they would attempt to be a little bit more open-minded.
Because, I have to confess, I was pleasantly surprised.
Note that you will be paying to watch a woman go on a spiritual quest in what may be perceived to be in a most self-indulgent manner.
And because I have thought that very thing, I never read the book because I have told everyone "I already lived that book; I don't need to read it."
I was gratefully surprised as to how moving the movie was. Of course men don't like it; it wreaks emotional havoc on them. It stirs up empathetic feelings of sadness, loss, grief.
Women, we love to watch these movies. They help us heal.
Maybe if more men watched these kinds of movies they wouldn't be so constipated.
Although, I will say, none of the actors appeared to be crying when there were acting like they were crying. One time, it looked like someone put two eye drops of water, each one directly below each of Julia's pupils, in an attempt to make it look like she had shed real tears. Crocodile tears, I say!
And some of the lines were kind of hokey.
But I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would.
