The Last Airbender

2010 soul-sapping experience

Rating: 5/20 (Abbey: 13/20)

Plot: A little kid with a blue glowing arrow tattoo on his bald head is the chosen one or something and as the titular last airbender, has to journey to far-away lands to learn how to bend water and fire and dirt. Fire-bending people are trying to get in his way.

Abbey's a fan of the television cartoon series that this is based on. I kept having to ask her questions about what the hell was going on in this piece of supernatural crap, but honestly, I didn't really care all that much and was just trying to stay awake. This was probably the most bored that I'll be with a movie all year. The characters were flat, and they might as well have been played by statues. That's about how much personality they all had. And I just didn't get this bending thing. The characters made these little kung-fu moves, and through the magic of special effects, crap moved around. I got that, but the fight scenes didn't make any sense to me. I kept trying to apply logic, paper-rock-scissors type rules, to the whole thing, but what element beats what? It seems like water would beat fire. What beats air? At least closing my eyes and trying to figure that all out kept me from having to see this movie. It looked synthetic, synthetic and ugly. And like Drive Angry, the criminals responsible for this have tried their best to take advantage of that fad with swooshing water and flying fire. No type of glasses will help this look any better though. The biggest issues here are with the storytelling though. This fantasy-adventure tale is told by a person who has no idea how to pace a movie or write dialogue. And who might that person be? M. Night Shmaltzydong, of course! And he tells this story so humorlessly. I've seen bits and pieces of the cartoon, and there's some humor in that. This thing is sickeningly stiff, as if somebody wanted this epic tale of bending crap to be super-serious and decided to suck out anything that could potentially cause the audience to have fun. And the best news? There are at least two more installments required to finish this story. I won't watch those with 3-D glasses either. In fact, I'd rather have somebody poke my eyes out than watch any more of this shit.

Jackass 3

2010 high art

Rating: 13/20

Plot: More comic mischief from the Jackasses. This time, they utilize 3-D technology so that it looks like the fecal matter is coming right into your living room! Huzzah!

Well, I felt like showering after watching this one, so that's something. I didn't watch this in 3-D, of course, but I can see where that would have been kind of fun. The colorful and gimmicky opening scene has the boys being pelted with paintball pellets, kicked in the face, and abused with little booby traps that might have been borrowed from Wily E. Coyote's attic. And they're wearing funny costumes. And some times it all happens in this slow motion. Now I don't possess a high-def television, but the images in this were impressively crisp anyway, fantastic news if you want to see every detail of a fat guy wearing some transparent plastic suit designed to make him ooze sweat. Or vomit. Or poop. Or urine. Or hair glued to somebody's palms right after it's been yanked from some other guy's chest. You get the idea. This is definitely not the movie I'd pick to watch with my grandmother if, following some miracle, she was resurrected and really wanted to watch a movie with me. Unless she picked it, of course. I'm not going to deny the dead the right to select a movie for movie night. There's something nice about seeing the jackasses willing to do all this gross or dangerous or gross and dangerous stuff despite their advancing ages. You get the sense that some are doing these things reluctantly though. And the stunts in Jackass 3(D) aren't as consistently hilarious as the ones in part two, the Empire Strikes Back of Jackass movies. I think they peaked (Wait a second. There's no way peaked is the right word here.) with number two. But I had more than a few chuckles, and as with the other stuff, I'm glad I watched it. I laughed most heartily at a scene involving a score or more of little people, one of their set-up/written gags. I'm a grade school kid in a thirty-seven year old's body though, so I, of course, enjoyed the slapstick as well. After all, if you can't appreciate video footage of a guy getting hit in the balls, you're just not a real American. There are people who could argue that the world would be a better place without these movies. I'm not sure I could successfully argue with those people actually, but I'm happy the movies do exist. Long live the Jackasses!

A Town Called Panic

2009 animated chaos

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20; Dylan: 12/20; Emma: 16/20; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Cowboy and Indian have forgotten to get Horse a birthday present and decide to build him a barbecue. A computer (user) error causes them to order fifty million bricks instead of fifty. This sets off a chain of cause-and-effects that involve what I think are sea monkeys, a stolen tractor, a falsely arrested farmer, missed music classes, a giant robot penguin, and a trip to the center of the earth.

Quick whining: Why couldn't this have been dubbed? I'm not stupid. I don't need all foreign movies that I watch to be dubbed. I don't mind reading. But there was so much happening on the screen, and I wanted to pay attention to it all.

If you love Gumby even half as much as I do, you need to check this out immediately. The humor's quirky, the stop-motion is clever but rudimentary, and the plot makes virtually no sense. This is a kiddie flick for the kiddies with ADHD, and these characters go all over the place during these misadventures. Gotta love the imaginative spirit of the writer/directors (Stephanie Aubier and Vincent Patar), a couple filmmakers who either have a good grasp on how the average child's mind works or are wacky on the junk. Don't watch this if you're looking for something with depth or heart. This ain't Pixar. This is simply a breezy bit of insanity with some fun characters and lots of very humorous episodes. I imagine it's the sort of thing that could irritate or even infuriate about the same amount of people that it could amuse. There are a few episodes of the television show on Youtube if you're interested. In fact, at about 80 minutes, this would probably be a test for the average adult's endurance like a lot of shorts blown up into features. But seriously--Gumby fans would love this.