Avatar

Data
Title: Avatar
Year: 2009
Length: 162 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Writer: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
Music: James Horner
Distinctions: Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects; Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Score, Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Editing

My reaction
Synopsis: a militant corporation is mining an inhabited planet
How I saw it: in the theater, yesterday
Concept: Bad.
Story: Indifferent. It does what it needs to to keep the action going, but it's just a string of cliches that falls apart if you think too much.
Characters: Terrible.
Dialog: Indifferent.
Pacing: Good. It moves along at an entertaining clip, but it often feels like there's a lot we're missing or skipping.
Cinematography: Good. Although, if you take into consideration how much was put into the visuals, it's kind of bad.
Special effects/design: Great. Impressively realistic. Never convincingly realistic - I always felt that I was watching painstakingly-detailed animation rather than photographs - but impressive. To be wowed by the special effects is really the only reason to see this movie, so see it in 3D if you have any intention of ever seeing it. It will probably suck on DVD.
Acting: Good. Some of it's bad, but most of the cast gets by - and there's not enough depth to the characters to call for more than that.
Music: Bad. Its only saving grace is that it's often unobtrusive.
Subjective Rating: 7/10 (Good). I was entertained. The action scenes are done quite well, although they're not especially memorable. The science fiction aspects don't work at all; I think Cameron forgot about a third of the way through writing the script that it wasn't supposed to be a magical fantasy world. And the not-so-subtle racial undertones made me fairly uncomfortable. Of course, it's the special effects that matter for this sort of movie, and they're great. But when all is said and done, I have to wonder why, if you're spending $250 million on a movie, you can't be bothered to come up with a story more compelling than a rip-off of Fern Gully.
Objective Rating: 2.2/4 (Okay).