Avatar vs. Point Break

Carolina and I went to see Avatar on Christmas, the three-dimensional version no less.

I haven't seen a 3-D movie since I was little, back when the glasses were those cardboard things with the red and blue plastic lenses, so I was blown away by how much the technology has advanced. It wasn't like the old days, when you might see a couple of things that kind of popped out at you. This was really like you were inside the movie. At a couple of points, I thought movie bugs were going up my nose.

Unfortunately, this was the only depth that was achieved in Avatar. Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it. In fact, I can't stop thinking about it. I was so transfixed by the visuals and the awesomeness of the 3-D that I didn't pay much attention to the dialogue or the beat-you-over-the-head James "I'm King of the World" Cameron allegory.

It's interesting that so many of his movies are about the shortcomings of technology (the Terminators, Titanic) because you could say the same thing about his films -- groundbreaking visual effects, but filled with empty emotion, cliched dialogue and rehashed plot points that leave you feeling gypped.

I was shaken out of my 3-D daze long enough to recognize that Cameron basically recycles the same undercover-character-meets-girl-under-false-pretenses-but-truly-falls-in-love storyline from a million other TV shows and films, including 1991's Point Break, which Cameron executive produced.

Instead of a hobbled (old football knee injury) FBI agent who goes undercover as a sky-diving surfer to catch a crew of bank robbers in ex-president masks, Avatar has a paraplegic ex-Marine going undercover as a blue-bodied Na'vi on the planet Pandora to catch a bunch of scientific data and precious metals.

While Keanu Reeves' Johnny Utah gets schooled in the art of surfing by surfer girl Lori Petty, then falls in love, in Avatar Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) gets schooled in the art of being a big blue alien on Pandora by Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), then falls in love. Like Johnny Utah, Jake Sully becomes unnaturally obsessed with the characters on which he's supposed to be gathering data, despite protestations and warnings from their co-workers. This all leads to the hackneyed old climax scene where the truth about the undercover agent's identity is revealed and that person desperately pleads with the object of his/her affection that "it started out as just a job, but it became so much more and now I really love you. Honest!" The loved one runs away crying, but not before gurgling an impassioned "I trusted you!"

Devastated, the undercover lover retreats, gets depressed and almost abandons the whole thing, but some big event occurs that endangers the loved one and all of his/her people, so the undercover lover comes back, puts his/her life on the line to save the day and in the process proves that he/she really does love her/him.

It doesn't matter if it's 1991 on the beach with a scruffy Patrick Swayze and a gang of bank robbers or 2154 on Pandora with very tall and slender blue people, but it helps tremendously if it's in 3-D.