Avatar 2009

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: As visionary tour guide, Cameron has no equal. Predictable story, cliched dialogue and logical lapses aside, he's still the man we want leading us into his Pandora's box. Read more

A.O. Scott, At the Movies: I had the feeling coming out of this movie that I haven't felt since maybe I was eleven years old in 1977 and I saw Star Wars for the first time. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: If your exhilaration with the (approximate) first half is undercut by an increasingly deflating pffffftttt sound, Cameron nonetheless has delivered the screen's most anticipated and persuasive blend of live-action and motion-capture animation to date. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: 'Avatar' is a very big, very enjoyable, summertime action film that, much as it covers several actors in computer-generated imagery, drapes new flesh over very old bones. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The much-hyped sci-fi actioner Avatar is the perfect showcase for Cameron's strengths...and his flaws. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The narrative would be ho-hum without the spectacle. But what spectacle! Avatar is dizzying, enveloping, vertiginous ... I ran out of adjectives an hour into its 161 minutes. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Mr. Cameron's singular vision has upped the ante for filmed entertainment, and given us a travelogue unlike any other. I wouldn't want to live on Pandora, mainly because of the bad air, but I'm glad to have paid it a visit. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Everyone recites their lines, awkwardly laying out exposition, speaking their clunky dialogue. None of this is supposed to matter, because we're presumably busy marveling at all the money on display. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Cameron has fared better than most in wedding cutting-edge special effects with ... genre storytelling, but Avatar, his supremely goofy science-fiction/action spectacular, finds him lost in a $250 million aquamarine light show. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: If only Cameron, who also wrote the script, had spent as much time on the story as he did the effects he uses to tell it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Avatar is an entertainment to be not just seen but absorbed on a molecular level; it's as close to a full-body experience as we'll get until they invent the holo-suits. Cameron aims for sheer wonderment, and he delivers. Read more

Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: Not only does Cameron blur the line between reality and CGI, he's at once jingoistic and anti-hawk. Right-wingers will feel welcomed in the first half, the left-brained will be vindicated by the climax. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Whatever way you choose to look at it, Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Watching it, I began to understand how people in 1933 must have felt when they saw King Kong. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Pandora is still a good place to park yourself for three hours. Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: It is cool. But all this "change the way you look at films" hype is just that. While Avatar is impressively seamless, you're never fooled. This doesn't look like a documentary film; it looks like a video game. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Cameron and his legion of CGI experts and skilled craftspeople have delivered a lovely, misty, dangerous world. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: I have seen the future of movies, and it is Avatar. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: As visual spectacle, Avatar is indelible, but as a movie it all but evaporates as you watch it. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: A movie whose effects are clearly revolutionary, a spectacle that millions will find adventure in. But it nevertheless feels unsatisfying and somehow lacks the pulse of a truly alive film. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Above all, Cameron remains committed to the discovering of new worlds at a moment when we seem so certain that everything worth discovering already has been. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The genre elements are all there: What critically wounds Avatar is Cameron's inability to write better characters. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: James Cameron's Avatar is the most beautiful film I've seen in years. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Even if this is old-fashioned storytelling, there's a lot of it -- and it has Cameron's directing DNA in every scene. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Along with the eye-popping visuals in writer-director James Cameron's sci-fi epic, there's also a lot of eye-rollingly silly stuff. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: It's rarely less than absorbing and never boring over its nearly three-hour length. Read more

Sara Vilkomerson, New York Observer: Did everything make sense? Nope. And you know what? Who cares! Avatar is thrilling, exciting and, best of all, something new that your eyeballs didn't even know they very much wanted to see. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility -- not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry -- the movie quite simply rocks. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: This is the most technically amazing motion picture to have arrived on screens in many years. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: We're not here for the plot, we're here for the cool-ass CGI/motion capture/movie magic, and for 2 1/2 hours, this movie never disappoints. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: It extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: It's a remote-control movie experience, a high-tech "wish you were here" scribbled on a very expensive postcard. Read more

Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle: The most-hyped movie of the year just about merits it. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: You, dear reader, want to know: Is it or is it not stupendously friggin' rad? And the answer is yes. For most of the first hour, a good portion of the second, and even many of the 40 minutes left after that, Avatar is stupendously friggin' rad. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film vibrates with the excitement of discovery and awe. Not just for the sight of six-legged rhinos and butterfly-hued dragons, but for the thousands of hours of work that unite here in a creative epiphany. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: For video gamers and fun-seeking geeks, those puny objections will be flattened beneath the titanic technical achievement. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Big money, big risk, pretty big reward. That's been his consistent pattern, and it's high time to give credit where credit is overdue: James Cameron delivers. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Twelve years after his triumph with Titanic, Cameron has successfully made a digital blockbuster feel as warm as an old-time movie, where blood temperature was more important than pixels. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: It's an impossible but completely plausible and seductive world that invites your total immersion. Don't resist it; sink in and fly with it. All Cameron asks is that you open your eyes. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

Tom Huddlestone, Time Out: Cameron's signature achievement may have been to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the oldest of all Hollywood maxims: all the money in the world is no subsitute for fresh ideas and a solid script. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: For all the grandeur and technical virtuosity of the mythical 3-D universe Cameron labored for years to perfect, his characters are one-dimensional, rarely saying anything unexpected. But for much of the movie, that hardly matters. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: The King of the World sets his sights on creating another world entirely in Avatar, and it's very much a place worth visiting. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The muscular, coming-atcha visuals trump the movie's camp dialogue and corny conception, but only up to a point. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: An ambitious, fully immersive cinematic experience. Read more