This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

Shortly before the release of his film Signs, Newsweek magazine heralded writer/director M. Night Shyamalan as “the next Spielberg,” a moniker that has proved to be something of a millstone about the neck of an artist whose films since then have met with nothing but exponentially mounting contempt. Taking a break from his twist-prone suspense thrillers (and the critical drumming that followed wherever they went), Shyamalan turned for the first time to an established and beloved quantity—the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. But like gravity, the law of diminished returns is nearly unassailable. I sincerely wish it weren’t so, but the only thing I see is a career whose promise was long since spent.

The world is divided into four kingdoms—air, water, earth and fire—each with very special individuals who have mastered their native elements and can manipulate them with their minds. But the Fire Kingdom is bent on total domination, and knowing that a reincarnated messiah called the Avatar—who can manipulate each of the four elements equally and bring balance and harmony to the war-ravaged universe—will be born an Airbender, has launched nothing short of complete genocide to ensure he never sees the light of day. But when 12-year-old Aang (Noah Ringer), frozen in suspended animation for more than 100 years is freed, he reveals he is the reincarnated Avatar, a responsibility he does not covet. However, with the world crashing down around his ears, Aang has little choice but to cast aside his personal desires and lead the resistance.

The Last Airbender is a colossal disappointment. Narratively clumsy and dreadfully sloppy, the film is like an intoxicated man, drunkenly lurching from place to place, never settled or steady on its feet. Though endowed with a grand, miraculous mythology, the film carries no weight, emotional or otherwise. Sure, it has some impressive visuals—Shyamalan’s camera does sweep around a lot—but it has no heart or soul to match. At times it feels as if Shyamalan is trying to achieve the grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, or evoke the sort of overarching Eastern mysticism found in Star Wars. But Shyamalan has next to no eye for action. Most of the time, he takes the lazy way out, settling on wide angle shots in which he simply tracks the combat from left to right, the way someone who’d never held a camera a day in their lives might be tempted to stage it. It doesn’t help that, as with Clash of the Titans, the use of 3D actually harms rather than elevates the viewing experience, making for hopelessly muddled, underwhelming visuals that are too dark most of the time to even enjoy.

Language has never been Shyamalan’s strong suit. But rather than see The Last Airbender as a fresh start worthy of professional collaboration, Shyamalan insisted on penning the screenplay himself. The result is a hackneyed, laughable script, a hybrid of pretentious, elevated language and jarringly pedestrian colloquialisms. These words—a large segment of which are delivered via lame narration and a barrage of pointless title cards—are set in the mouths of actors so wooden and so amateurish as to incite chuckles of derision throughout the audience. Most of these lead actors are Caucasian, jarringly set amongst a sea of diverse Asian ethnicities. And whose dim-witted idea was it to cast The Daily Show contributor Aasif Mandvi as the lead villain!?

The Last Airbender is intended as the first of three films, but unless its admittedly significant fan base turns out in ravenous droves, the trilogy will most likely die a stillborn death, cast aside like The Golden Compass and other franchises whose cost-benefit ratio was deemed insupportable to continue. Let’s hope this truly is the last Airbender.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi, Cliff Curtis
Rated PG for fantasy violence.
Running Time: 103 minutes