M. Night Shyamalan’s career has essentially been in freefall since 2004, after The Village started the slow process of sabotaging the goodwill that he had built up with moviegoers over the first half of the last decade. There aren’t many filmmakers who could survive three critical flops in a row, but he is still standing, and at least he has had the sense to finally switch gears and try something new. Instead of writing another original supernatural thriller with a twist ending, he opted to work with someone else’s material, signing on to turn the popular animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender into a live action special effects extravaganza (no relation to James Cameron’s Avatar). Unfortunately, M. Night being M. Night, he refused to allow anyone else to write the script, and that may have ultimately been his undoing.

Once again, The Last Airbender is getting ripped to shreds by critics, but this time around I am a little more confused about the unanimous backlash than with Lady in the Water or The Happening. Oh sure, this movie has problems, but it is certainly no worse than a lot of the other crap that has been released this summer. As an action-packed fantasy film for kids, The Last Airbender does its job. It’s not going to be seen as a high point in Shyamalan’s filmography, but it does prove that he can handle a big budget blockbuster with CG-filled set pieces. Unfortunately, at this point he couldn’t deliver something that would make fanboys happy if his life depended on it.

The Last Airbender draws from Chinese mythology, Eastern religion and Asian culture, taking place in a world where there are four nations of people, each governed by one of the four classical elements: air, water, earth and fire. The nations train groups of magic users called “benders”, who can manipulate their element through martial arts, and every generation, there is a chosen one called the Avatar who is able to bend all four elements and whose responsibility it is to maintain peace. As the movie opens, the Avatar has disappeared for over 100 years, leaving the world to descend into chaos as the Fire Nation has declared war on all of the others. Among the Fire Nation is Prince Zuko, who has been exiled and will only be allowed to return if he can find and capture the Avatar.

As you may have guessed by now, I have never seen a single episode of the animated series, so I can’t say how faithful this movie is to the source material. However, I can say that it actually made me want to check out the cartoon, so that has to count for something, right? I thought the overall world was pretty cool, even though the movie thrusts us into the middle of it pretty quickly. The Last Airbender plays on certain fantasy themes and ideas that we’ve seen many times before, but it still feels unique — particularly for a Hollywood blockbuster. I liked the fact that most of the benders can only use instances of their element that are around them as opposed to creating them out of thin air (although it does make you wonder why anyone in the water village would keep fire around). The movie feels a bit rushed, which is a pretty common problem with adaptations of longer works (the first movie encompasses the entire first season of the show), but I never found it confusing or boring.

The special effects by ILM are incredible, and definitely some of the best I’ve seen so far this year. If you’re a big martial arts fan, I suppose you may be a bit disappointed by a lot of the action sequences because they mostly consist of benders using motions to summon magical energy, without engaging in direct hand-to-hand combat. Aang’s abilities go beyond combat, however, and it’s exhilarating to watch him bound and run in ways that defy gravity. I also liked some of the creatures in the movie, even though they only make brief appearances. Aang’s flying bison reminded me of Falkor from The Neverending Story crossed with one of the wild things from Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.

I’m guessing that the biggest beef that most people will have with this movie is the dialogue, and to a lesser extent, the acting. I agree that both of these are problematic, and M. Night Shyamalan is the one who has to take responsibility for both of them. The melodramatic tone is a bit similar to Lady in the Water, but it feels slightly more appropriate here in a full-on fantasy world. It seems like Shyamalan is losing the ability to ground his characters in any sense of reality, and his dialogue continues to be way too stilted and simplistic. He even gets into some extremely awkward George Lucas-esque territory this time around with the blossoming love story between Sokka and Princess Yue. Imagine Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Episode II flirting with a younger version of Jessica Alba from Fantastic Four, and you have an idea of the kind of chemistry that Jackson Rathbone and Seychelle Gabriel have together.

Still, the questionable acting is forgivable for some of the younger actors, particularly with Noah Ringer, who has never acted before in his life. All things considered, I didn’t think he was bad, although it does seem like he was chosen more for his physical similarity to the character Aang than anything else. Unfortunately, Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel is way too dull and dead serious as the disgraced Prince Zuko, as is Aasif Mandvi, who plays the Fire Nation’s Commander Zhao. The fact that the villains are somewhat laughable is definitely a major issue in this movie, and probably the thing that had me wincing the most.

The other thing that is a little disappointing is that this is clearly the first in what is intended to be a series of films, and so the story does not feel fully satisfying and self-contained. Fortunately, the epic score from James Newton Howard does a good job at creating peaks and valleys, and eventually, a sense of closure. At 103 minutes, the movie moves along at a good clip and never gets bogged down, and I can appreciate that — especially for Shyamalan who usually favours long, drawn out scenes. He definitely showed some restraint this time around (and he also wisely avoided a self-indulgent cameo for once… unless I just missed it somewhere).

Overall, while it’s far from the best movie of the year, I had a good time with The Last Airbender in spite of its flaws. At the risk of sounding like a Shyamalan apologist (hey, I hated Lady in the Water as much as most people did), my advice would be to ignore all the negative buzz you may have heard about this movie and at least give it a chance. Perhaps it is fans of the series who are being overly picky, or perhaps it is the racebending controversy rearing its ugly head, but more than anything, I think it’s just a case of M. Night Shyamalan getting thrown under the bus yet again. Fantasy films in general are not everyone’s cup of tea, but certainly if you thought the trailers looked impressive, you should go in with an open mind and judge for yourself. Better yet, just pretend Zack Snyder directed it and you’ll probably love it. — Sean