Film File - The Last Airbender

It can be a real problem shaking off a bad career jinx. After a series of poor film choices - 'The Village', 'The Happening', 'Lady In The Water' - writer-director M Night Shyamalan has opted for a run at the fantasy genre to restart his failed career. Bad choice. The director who set the world on fire in 1999 with 'The Sixth Sense' has taken the animated Nicolodeon series, 'The Last Airbender', and delivered a unsteady, limp and generally unappealing film. The film is set in the future, after humanity has devastated the earth and survives in an uneasy peace where warring tribes are held from each other's throats by a Mandela-like Avatar. Unfortunately, the Avatar has now disappeared and the planet looks like it's heading for outright annihilation. The basic plot premise has the four elements - air, water, earth and fire - each with their own kingdom, and citizens who can harness these elements by force of mind - firebenders who can throw fireballs, earthbenders who can shift rocks, etc. As the story begins, the fire tribe is intent on taking over the world and conquering the other three elements, with the only obstacle in their way a young boy called Aang (Noah Ringer), who has the possible powers to harness and control all four of the elements in one superior force. Needless to say, the evil fire folks would like to exterminate him. The film begins with waterbender Katara (Nicola Peltz), and her older warrior brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), unfreezing an iceberg to release possibly the last airbender - a move that catches the eye of Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), the exiled leader of the fire tribe who has been overthrown by Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis). What follows is 103 minutes of occasional action, where the three heroes array themselves against overwhelming odds with sizeable amounts of element throwing, interspersed with several weighty voice-overs serving no real purpose other than to induce confusion. The 3D effects are so poor that flames appear flat and lacking vibrancy, and the water seems unable even to wet those whom it splashes upon. Worst of all is the dialogue - a verse crouched in medieval-style formality that's not that far removed from a school play about the Knights of the Round Table. The cast in a mix of mostly unknowns, apart from Patel who played so well in 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Rather than unlocking the potential talent of younger actors knocking on the door of career advancement, however, Shyamalan seems to have done little to help his charges in terms of direction - all too many of the lines are uttered without any real feeling and emotion. Ringer, Peltz and Rathbone certainly have the looks to make the grade in the crowded Hollywood casting arena, but this one on their CVs isn't going to be something they'll be so proud of. Having demonstrated so much promise in 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable' at the beginning of the decade, this director has clearly lost his way over the past few films and, in the process, spurned the promise so early glimpsed. 'The Last Airbender' is supposedly the first in a trilogy, with the other instalments due on 2012 and 2014. If there's any sense in Tinseltown, these plans will be quietly shelved and forgotten about.