Moviegoer's Review on The Last Airbender

Disclaimer: Read at own risk. This might contain spoilers. No other benefits were gained by the blogger for this review except for entertainment brought on by blogger’s initiative to watch the movie.

There are no other words to say it; the whole family is definite avid fans of the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. We’ve watched the animated series from Book 1 to 3 over and over again.

So being true Aang enthusiasts, I recently took my kids to watch the live action adaptation of The Last Airbender 3D at the cinema.

Although most critics have slammed the movie as being boring and drawn out, I found it good (but then I am no proper critic). It might not have been as great as it should have been but nevertheless the adaptation, most of the time, stayed true to the basic story. My youngest voiced out some differences between the adaptation movie and the animated series. Her most favourite was when Yue (pronounced Yu-wei) decided to give her life back to the spirits. The character, Yue, floated herself in the water and when her spirit left her body, her hair turned black. My youngest is quick to point out that the character is not supposed to do it this way. In the cartoon, the character held the two fish (representing the spirits) and then the character’s spirit left her body and floated to the sky towards the moon. And then she disappeared.

Bringing the kids along, the verdict is:

6¾ year old – good movie but she got a bit restless towards the end. I suppose it was just long for her and it was time for a bathroom break. She is just turning 7 and the movie was a PG10. She did remind us of all the characters’ names when they appeared on the screen so she was attentive enough throughout the story.

14¾ year old – also good but she felt that the story moved a bit too fast. This is of course a natural feeling with adaptations. You can’t cram a whole 10 hours of cartoon series into 2 hours of movie time without doing a fast turn. So yes, the movie did move fast. She was also a bit irritated that they called some of the characters wrong (Aang was introducing himself as a sorta “Ong”, Sokka was called “Soh-Ka”, and Iroh was “E-roh”).

34½ year old (who is acting a bit like a 10 year old) – also good but felt the end part of the movie could have been shot at better lighting. Really, it was just too dark. I actually felt funny inside the moviehouse. Here I am, watching this movie which I felt did not have enough light….and I’m wearing glasses??? I really digged Aang’s eyebrows. He was always shot with one half of his face on the screen and the other half off and so the eyebrows were prominent….to me anyway. I also like the character Yue. So sad her part was so short. She reminded me of a young Denise Richards with white hair.

So, all in all, it was a good outing to a good movie, for kids and kids-who-never-grow-old alike.