the best UK last airbender review (repost)
(cross posting this to my own LJ, currently in moderation over at racebending ... )
ETA: just got rejected (SOP for the comm for me, frankly, when they're not leaving it in the queue for 2 weeks thereby preventing me from submitting anything else) by anonymous mod (which I therefore can't reply to, thanks) with demands to put in things like links to other reviews which are not part of what I wrote about. Write your own damn post the way you want it, don't tell me what to write or link to. IDGAF what the Guardian said about X or Y, I'm talking about the Daily fucking Mail, okay? That's like making a post about Microsoft and having a mod tell me that it's rejected unless I include a link to some vaguely connected thing over at Apple.
So the film finally opened in the UK. The reviews are awesome as only the California-in-July single-digit-humidity dry wit of the Brits can accomplish. The reviews are uniformly bad there, no waffling middling barely fresh reviews at all, they're scathing. And add on the unintended hilarity of "bender" being a slang word for "gay" over there, which makes the resulting film even more lulzworthy just for the prurient audience reactions to the dialog. Ah, the US and England, two nations divided by a common language...
But I had to draw attention to the guy from the Daily Mail. Now there's a dude who can write a review saying something new besides "last M Night movie" or "giggle tee hee benders" blah blah:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1302609/The-Last-Airbender-From-The-Sixth-Sense-total-NONSENSE-M-Night-Shyamalan.html
"...the 'spirit world', which in this movie takes the dispiriting form of a dragon preaching non-violence and a couple of koi carp who I hoped might carp but instead remain frustratingly coy."
"Aided by a couple of personality-lite teenagers, Katara (Nicola Peltz), who can bend water, and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), who can't do anything, least of all act...."
"In a role that required the mystical gravitas of a young Dalai Lama, the depressingly earth-bound Caucasian Noah Ringer speaks the lines as though he has learnt them phonetically."
"Jackson Rathbone seems to have model led his performance, inexplicably, on Hayden Christensen in Star Wars 2 and 3."
"The choreography is so clunky, the actors so unfocused and the editing so slack that, even in the action climax, extras can be seen waiting for cues before striking martial arts poses, while computer-generated special-effects rage all around them... Occasionally, one of them decides enough's enough, and falls over."
And of course, the payoff:
"Shyamalan's dialogue is so bad it makes George Lucas's efforts seem like Billy Wilder. Much of it appears to have been translated through many languages on its way to English by junior civil servants under the tutelage of Lord Prescott.
"I particularly treasured one bad guy's wondrously stilted attempt to express human sympathy: 'Again, I offer my condolences on your nephew burning to death in that terrible accident.'
"It's astonishing that Shyamalan was able to get a project of any size into production after The Lady In The Water and The Happening.
Terrifyingly, he is threatening to make two Airbender sequels. Can no one stop him?
Under the circumstances, it's hard to know what more to say, except: 'Paramount, again I offer my condolences on your motion picture burning to death in this terrible accident.'"
I don't know this man, but I think I love him a little. Plus I want that last quote on a button or an icon or something. Seriously.
(ETA: the uniformly bad reviews from England have knocked the Tomatometer rating down to 7%. Three cheers!)
ETA: just got rejected (SOP for the comm for me, frankly, when they're not leaving it in the queue for 2 weeks thereby preventing me from submitting anything else) by anonymous mod (which I therefore can't reply to, thanks) with demands to put in things like links to other reviews which are not part of what I wrote about. Write your own damn post the way you want it, don't tell me what to write or link to. IDGAF what the Guardian said about X or Y, I'm talking about the Daily fucking Mail, okay? That's like making a post about Microsoft and having a mod tell me that it's rejected unless I include a link to some vaguely connected thing over at Apple.
So the film finally opened in the UK. The reviews are awesome as only the California-in-July single-digit-humidity dry wit of the Brits can accomplish. The reviews are uniformly bad there, no waffling middling barely fresh reviews at all, they're scathing. And add on the unintended hilarity of "bender" being a slang word for "gay" over there, which makes the resulting film even more lulzworthy just for the prurient audience reactions to the dialog. Ah, the US and England, two nations divided by a common language...
But I had to draw attention to the guy from the Daily Mail. Now there's a dude who can write a review saying something new besides "last M Night movie" or "giggle tee hee benders" blah blah:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1302609/The-Last-Airbender-From-The-Sixth-Sense-total-NONSENSE-M-Night-Shyamalan.html
"...the 'spirit world', which in this movie takes the dispiriting form of a dragon preaching non-violence and a couple of koi carp who I hoped might carp but instead remain frustratingly coy."
"Aided by a couple of personality-lite teenagers, Katara (Nicola Peltz), who can bend water, and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), who can't do anything, least of all act...."
"In a role that required the mystical gravitas of a young Dalai Lama, the depressingly earth-bound Caucasian Noah Ringer speaks the lines as though he has learnt them phonetically."
"Jackson Rathbone seems to have model led his performance, inexplicably, on Hayden Christensen in Star Wars 2 and 3."
"The choreography is so clunky, the actors so unfocused and the editing so slack that, even in the action climax, extras can be seen waiting for cues before striking martial arts poses, while computer-generated special-effects rage all around them... Occasionally, one of them decides enough's enough, and falls over."
And of course, the payoff:
"Shyamalan's dialogue is so bad it makes George Lucas's efforts seem like Billy Wilder. Much of it appears to have been translated through many languages on its way to English by junior civil servants under the tutelage of Lord Prescott.
"I particularly treasured one bad guy's wondrously stilted attempt to express human sympathy: 'Again, I offer my condolences on your nephew burning to death in that terrible accident.'
"It's astonishing that Shyamalan was able to get a project of any size into production after The Lady In The Water and The Happening.
Terrifyingly, he is threatening to make two Airbender sequels. Can no one stop him?
Under the circumstances, it's hard to know what more to say, except: 'Paramount, again I offer my condolences on your motion picture burning to death in this terrible accident.'"
I don't know this man, but I think I love him a little. Plus I want that last quote on a button or an icon or something. Seriously.
(ETA: the uniformly bad reviews from England have knocked the Tomatometer rating down to 7%. Three cheers!)