"He had his chance. He missed it."At least it's not The Happening - well, not quite. There is clear potential for an exciting children's action/adventure fantasy film to be made from this material, but M. Night Shyamalan's inert take on The Last Airbender is certainly not it. As director and writer, Shyamalan has to shoulder responsibility for the clumsy and careless script, rendered completely lifeless by the portentous and relentless one-note delivery by virtually the entire cast. Dev Patel stands out with a spirited performance as the Fire Lord's banished son, but the young cast members struggle to give the material conviction. James Newton Howard provides an expansive, stirring score that feels detached from the ponderous and low-key style of the on-screen action. There are some good-looking model/CG visuals augmenting the location work, but the very poor Clash Of The Titans-style 3D post-conversion is at best distracting and at worst an outright failure. There are only so many defocused backgrounds an audience can take, especially in one unforgivably composed duologue scene that is staggeringly poor on screen. The Last Airbender is a long, dull film, and the threatened trilogy structure (this is 'Book 1', with a very sudden open ending) does it no favours, a second film looking unlikely and - on this evidence - unappealing.
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