Today's movie is going to be a little different. I'm not judging it based on how good of a movie it is, but on how good of an adaptation it is. And no, I won't be using my own experiences with the books, I'm going to be using my girlfriend's experiences.
Alright, a little backstory. I am not all that familiar with the book series that today's movie is based on, and hadn't really heard that much about it until I saw the first trailer for it. My girlfriend, on the other hand, is a fan of the books and was waiting for this movie with the attitude of "Please don't suck! Please don't suck! Please don't suck!"So, this review is going to be a combination of my thoughts (as a casual viewer) on the movie as well as hers (being a fan).
Let's get this out of the way: It sucked. Doesn't matter who you ask, her or myself. It's just bad. From what I reckon, it's not Last Airbender bad, but it's still pretty poor, at least they got the name pronunciations right.
So, again, knowing next to nothing about the series, I went in with an open mind not exactly expecting Harry Potter, but with some high hopes. Put it to you this way, if I had a nickel for every time I shrugged my shoulders and thought "I guess I should have read the books" everytime a character did something nonsensical or something just came out of left field, I could fund my own Dark Knight Trilogy, and it would be awesome and not have Ben Affleck, but I digress. Seriously, there are some moments that just come out of nowhere. Like a guy being called out on having the hots for another guy. Apparently it was made clear from the beginning that this character was gay but in the movie, we were just expected to know it already, I guess. I wasn't able to call it. Then again, I'm a guy, my gay-dar is practically nonexistent. But I digress. I will give it credit for having some creative ideas and a competent enough cast, but I just couldn't get over the number of plot holes that came up that only those who read the book could fill.
On the other end of the fence, you have my girlfriend who's feelings on the movie were almost identical to mine, but her contempt for it had more to do with the fact that so much of the book was either left out or not explored enough. Not to mention that a key character was totally botched, both by the writing and the character performing his part. I guess in the book, he was a sarcastic wise-cracker and in the movie, he's very stoic and serious all the time.
Final grade: D+, wait for the dollar theater
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