Monday, December 28, 2009

"Avatar": the view from the front row.

My friend Makena had texted me on Saturday night. It was a long, multi-page text, listing all the ingredients we would need to make cookies, which we had been planning on doing on Sunday. We had joked about it for a while and since she was leaving within the next few days to go up to her family's cabin, Sunday seemed like the perfect day to have her over to make cookies.

My family, apparently, had other plans.

I was informed, at noon on Sunday, that we were going to the movies, to see Sherlock Holmes, so Makena wouldn't be able to come over.

Upon retrieving our tickets and entering the theater, the ticket person took my ticket stub, handed me a pair of 3D glasses, and pointed to theater five, wishing me a good day.

Something didn't add up. 3D glasses... For Sherlock Holmes? Huh?

And then I glanced at the ticket stub, which read: "Avatar 3D."

I waved the ticket stub in front of my dad's face. "You got us tickets to Avatar, Dad!"

He simply nodded at me. How out of the loop I was.

We entered the theater, which was surprisingly full. And, being that full of people, we had to sit in the first few rows. Of course. We went to a 3D movie and sat literally within twenty feet of the screen. I have an awful neck cramp just thinking about it. LIke, seriously. Whose bad idea wa sit to show up twenty minutes before a popular movie, expecting to get great seats? That great honor, ladies and gentlemen, would go to my father.

The redeeming quality about the 3D-ness of the movie was that the glasses looked like wayfarers. Hooray.

Comparatively, when you think you're going to watch Robert Downey Jr. parade across the screen and instead are tricked into watching blue half-human mutations scamper across the screen for two and a half hours, Avatar wasn't very good. But, after I got over the initial grumpiness, (and after I saw the main character,) I got into the movie.

It might have actually been worth the eight dollars.

While most of the movie is all about special effects, the plotline was great, if not slightly predictable at parts.

The 3D got old really fast. I found myself peering over the glasses at times just to see what it looked like. My opinion on 3d? "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." It's like putting mini chocolate chips on a sprinkled doughnut. It doesn't really make it any better, but it doesn't hurt the overall product. It's just overkill.

That being said, it was still a good movie. Scratch that. It was a great movie.

Blog post ends here.

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