M. Night Shamalan's The Last Air Bender is the worst movies I've seen since Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. And while not nearly as insultingly bad as TF2, The Last Air Bender will probably be remembered as the worst movie of 2010 just like I'll remember TF2 as the worst movie ever.

I want to say this first though: I'm not a real big fan of the cartoon. Not in the sense that I don't like the show, but in the sense that I really haven't seen it. You see, by the time the cartoon began airing, due to my lack of time, interest, and a consistent Cable/Satilite connection I passed it up during initial run. Honestly, to me the cartoon looked like an animesq mix between Xiolin Showdown and Naruto; it wasn't until I saw the movie's trailer last year that I even developed an interest in watching the cartoon.

I watched an episode in its entirety for the first time last week and was instantly hooked. Did I ever misjudge the cartoon. The cartoon has everything going for it, the story is interesting, the characters are well written, the action is exciting, the comedy is witty, the music is excellent, the show has a something for everyone. I've only seen a few episodes from the first and second seasons but from what I've seen the show is top-notch.

This movie on the other hand breaks all the conventions a movie should follow, and not in a good way. Everything about this movie is wrong.

1. The movie is horribly miscast.
Say what you will, but the lack of East Asians main characters in an East Asian inspired fantasy is a little off putting to me. That's like cast the Lords of the Ring movies without white people; yeah it can be done but it shortchanges the audiences willing suspension of disbelief. I won't say anymore, but I'm kind of tired of Hollywood doing stuff like this. I think the casting of the main character Aang was passable and I actually liked Shaun Toub's performances as Iroh. The Casting of Dev Patel as the main antagonists is a little bizarre although his performance wasn't that bad. Everyone else is horribly miscast.

2. The script is horrible
The Movies tries to condense a 20 episode season into a less than two hour movie, and the result is not pretty. If I didn't know a little about the characters beforehand I wouldn't have known who was doing what and why despite the fact that like 95% of the movie's dialogue is nothing but exposition. The pacing is terrible, the movie seems rushed and as a result...

3. The acting is bad and the characters come off as are flat and uninteresting.
The bad dialogue seems force and the performances from the child actors were okay at best and hilariously bad at worst. The performances from the adult cast were hammy and the movie gives little room for characterization. The movie gives no time for character development so you don't really care what happens to them.

4. The action and special effects were over the top while at the same time not being the least bit exciting.
When the actors weren't spewing out the plot from their mouths they were busy doing over the top forms (katas, taegueks, taolus, whatever) that did nothing but look silly and waste valuable time that could have spent on characterization. The special effects were good but were a bit much. I think the movie would have been much better if more time was spent on the script than money spent of the movie's CGI.

5. The movie's score was inappropriate for the movies setting.
This is nitpicking but it just kind of bugged me that the movie was set in an East Asian fantasy yet the music sounded like it came from your standard action flick. I believe that if they would have gotten someone like Tan Dun to compose the movie's score it wouldn't have saved the movie, but it would have made it more authentic.

I'm getting tired of writing this so here's the bottom line:
The movie's story is poorly written, the acting is laughable, the action is boring and not choreographed very well, and effects are good but doesn't leave an impression. The movie strips the source material of everything that made it fun and interesting to watch and replaced it with possibly the worst summer block buster of 2010.

I give the movie a 4/10