I Saw Avatar

Saw it. Liked it. Recommend it. Avatar has no plot, the characters have the depth of Disney cartoons and the dialogue ("You're not in Kansas!" "We will fight terror, with terror!") ranges from "sketchy" to "George Lucas-esque painful to listen to." But...

Yeah, you should probably see this in the theatre. Ideally in 3-D. Ideally as soon as possible.

I love Avatar's dopey, hippie message. Maybe it's just that I saw the film on the right day but I was all-up for a flashy, brainless "tree-huggers vs. American-style corporate fascists in space" fable where (spoiler alert!) the good [cats] win. After a couple of weeks watching humanity's leaders bungle through Copenhagen for a useless non-treaty on global warming in real life, I needed giant, blue, feline warriors killing the crap out of crummy, capitalist scum and their stormtroopers-for-hire.

When the helicopters came, Bruce Cockburn wanted a rocket launcher. All the Na'vi (as they're called) need are inch-thick, four-foot arrows (unnecessarily) dipped in neurotoxic poison. Suck on that, you forest-raping Earth-fuckers!

As for the special and 3-D effects, dial your expectations down, slightly. Avatar won't change the way movies are made like Star Wars or Jurassic Park did. Avatar's effects aren't revolutionary, they're evolutionary. But yes, they're the best effects ever. Just don't expect to see a new colour being invented before your eyes, is all I'm saying. (I should add that, to director James Cameron's credit, the effects aren't used in a pushy way that would distract from the movie. Restraint is an admirable quality in a film that's 95 per cent computer-made.)

So that's my take. Hope it's helpful. Four dogs out of five.

Okay, four and a half. Not too bad for a flick with no script.