Poor Manoj ‘Night’ Shyamalan.
Our heart goes out to the Philadelphia resident (Manoj N. Shymalan hails from South India).
We ‘feel’ your pain, Night Shyamalan. 😉
Well, sort of.
Folks, movie critics here have gone rampage on the poor fella’s latest movie The Last Airbender.
Night Shyamalan is the producer, director and writer of The Last Airbender, which debuts in 3D and regular version tonight.
By the way, the movie features Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame.
Here’s a sample of trenchant comments on Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender:
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.
Matt Pais, Metromix.com
Let’s just be honest: M. Night Shyamalan is an idiot.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
Even during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.
Peter Debruge, Variety
This is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action Avatar adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
Keith Phipps, AV Club
Where to start with this one? How about this: If any movie ever warranted a class-action lawsuit against the filmmakers, it’s The Last Airbender.
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 — gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. “I See Dead People’s” career gurgling down the drain.
Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com
Slavishly amateurish with no heart. Cold, not engaging, and dull. Bad writing and film school-level directing. What happened to an exciting story?
Christy Lemire, Associated Press
The Last Airbender is a joyless, soulless, muddled mess, but the worst part of all doesn’t come until the very end. That’s when it makes the clear suggestion that two more such movies are in store for us.
Brian Orndorf, BrianOrndorf.com
The picture drags along the ground like a fresh corpse, treating its own myth as homework and the participants as burdens, while feeling around a fantastically wasted world of weathered environments and ornate set design.
Jason Zingale, Bullz-Eye.com
Even in 3D, [it’s] one-dimensional.
Neil Miller, Film School Rejects
The most well-rounded failure of the year so far.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
Movie Critics Bugger Manoj ‘Night’ Shyamalan’s Last Airbender added by SearchIndia.com on
View all posts by SearchIndia.com →
It sad to see that such a great series is being filmed by this moron. I think he should stop directing the films.
I loved the series because of its great concept and characters. I warned my friends who were all excited for the movie after watching the series that it going to be trash going by the reputation of this director.
I sincerely hope that sequels are directed by different director.I mean its an achievement to ruin an already established series with your writing skills.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Manoj N.Shyamalan is finito.
We recommend he try his luck at shooting desi weddings, Car Poojas, local Hindu Temple functions et al in the Philadelphia/Cherry Hills, NJ area. 😉
whoa.. racist reviewers 😉
SearchIndia.com Responds:
True, the U.S. reviewers hate Hollywood film directors from Pondicherry. 😉
Everyone expected a lot from him after 2 huge hits (Sixth Sense and Signs);but he’s just delivered duds since then.
How’s this film faring at the Box Office anyway?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: How’s this film faring at the Box Office anyway?
Too early to say because the movie debuted only today.
We’d be surprised if it fares well.
When I first watched the movie I didn’t feel it was as bad as the reviewers claimed – it wasn’t a great film, but it wasn’t the worst I had seen either. It got me interested in the series since I am a big fantasy nut. I initially thought this was based on a book so I started searching for it, when I realized that this was a Nickelodeon cartoon series, “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. Once I started watching the series I couldn’t put it down. And it took me barely a few episodes to realize what the critics did to Shyamalan was nowhere as bad as what Shyamalan did to the series.
The original portrays the kids as bright and fun-loving, while the movie gives the whole thing a glum and morose feel. Barring the character of Zuko (the one played by Dev Patel), the key characters are so far removed from their original persona that it is jarring. The most glaring disconnect was with respect to the main protagonist, Aang. Aang is supposed to be a genius who masters things very quickly but doesn’t practise hard, and he doesn’t obsess about saving the world all the time, quite different from his portrayal in the movie.
The series also successfully blends several elements of spiritualism, philosophy, woman empowerment, humour, science and romance. Shyamalan on the other hand blends a big budget, disproportionately poor effects, a story with a lost message, generally poor acting, corny dialogues that are not even expository and an overall forgettable movie.
The Airbender series is available on Netflix, if you are interested.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write: And it took me barely a few episodes to realize what the critics did to Shyamalan was nowhere as bad as what Shyamalan did to the series.
Sweetie, mucho likey. 😉
2. As a special gesture toward Kreacher, we’ll watch Avatar: The Last Airbender series starting tonight.
Netflix has three seasons with 54 streaming episodes in all ranging in length from 23-minutes to 92-minutes.
At the end, we’ll watch the Night Shyamalan version (also available on NFLX streaming) to compare the movie and the Nickelodeon series.
We may or may not blog about them. As the late Congress Party leader K.Kamaraj would say, Parkalam (we’ll see).