The Happening:
At first glance, The Happening is the sort of movie one might make if they wanted to make of parody of M Night Shymalan's style. The plot structure is standard B-movie fare: some mysterious but vaguely supernatural phenomenon is causing people to kill themselves in staggeringly large numbers, with some inevitably ridiculous explanation looming toward the end of the movie.
Like The Village, there's a collection of quality actors, like Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, and Zooey Deschanel, but they all seem to be confused with how to deliver their awkwardly written roles. Wahlberg is never convincing as a biology teacher, and his attempts at lightheartedness and humor usually fall flat. Leguizamo is marginally better in this respect, but never memorable or more than even momentarily likable. Deschanel play's the wife to Wahlberg's character, but their relationship never has any real chemistry or compelling drama. Frank collison plays one of the fellow survivors of this disaster, and he has a constant expression of bug-eyed confusion as if he gave his entire performance while high.
The movie follows these characters and other survivors trying to outrun this strange phenomenon. The horror elements of the story are a complete gamble. Some of the suicides are genuinely unsettling and even terrifying, whereas others are downright goofy. On top of that, there never seems to be an appropriate level of panic to the situation. That aside, the overall adventure is passable and very occasionally even compelling. Occasional scenes, especially the more imaginative suicides and scenes featuring Leguizamo's character, partially live up to the potential of Shymalan's early movies. And the idea of taking refuge in a model house is admittedly clever.
The explanation given for the disaster -that plants are getting their revenge for humankind's destruction of the environment by releasing a deadly chemical - feels absolutely asinine. Unlike some of Shymalan's previous twists, it fails to add any depth or insight to the plot. And on top of that, it's not even revealed in a clever way. It also results in some completely absurd scenes, like characters outrunning the wind, which leads to a few unusual plot inconsistencies.
All of this results in a movie that ranges from decent disaster movie to complete self-parody. Not exactly a bad movie, but not one that I can recommend to anyone except maybe a fan of sci-fi channel disaster movies. Once again I'll credit Shymalan with ambition and the desire to do something different, but the execution shows some obvious signs of decline.
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The Last Airbender
Before the reviews came in, I had high hopes for this movie. Being a fan of the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, I expected a brisk, light-hearted fantasy action series. As long as the show's plot structure was kept more or less intact and the and the film delivered some exciting magic-infused martial arts action, most viewers would be satisfied. What we got instead was not simply a disappointment, but a movie that's absolutely baffling in the extent and creativity of its ineptitude.
While Shymalan never seemed like an obvious choice for directing Avatar, I can at least see the logic behind this choice. M Night Shymalan has a reputation for getting great performances out of child actors, and he's known for dealing with the mythical and supernatual in realistic ways. Ironically, it's exactly these qualities that backfire the hardest in The Last Airbender. While all of the acting is uneven, the young actors playing the leads of Aang, Katara, and Sokka are particularly laughable. But like with the Star Wars prequels, I don't blame the actors when a weak script forces them to say and do asinine things. The dialogue goes beyond feeling unnatural; characters more or less just spit out plot points without bothering to formulate them into what can even loosely be called conversations. As a result, moments that were compelling on the show just end up feeling goofy in the movie.
Characters are usually dumbed down to basic archetypes like hero, hero's friend, and bad guy. The Fire Nation, for example, are given no motivation in the movie, aside from being evil. And even this would be forgivable if they at least succeeded at being palpably evil. But when you cast The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi in what should be an action villain role, disaster is pretty much guaranteed.
But at least this leaves Shymalan's mature eye for the supernatural, right? Wrong. Don't feel bad, I had high hopes too. The cartoon's interesting Asian-inspired take on magic and spirituality is dumbed down just like everything else. And the actual bending fails to impress visually. And even in 3D they feel more like pages from a pop-up book than anything with real depth and dimension. It's rare for a movie to make me yearn for the likes of Michael Bay, who can at least make special effects crash against each other in a fun and visually exciting way. The action is mostly pg-rated slapstick butt-kicking that's too lacking in violence or artistry for me to call martial arts. And the final battle scene just looks like a lot of people swinging weapons around aimlessly rather than something out of the classic fantasy action movies that The Last Airbender tries to emulate.
The one aspect of the movie that actually delivers is the set design. The Last Airbender features some beautiful sights and the occasional pretty special effect. The water tribe's fortress in the third act is spectacularly imagined and executed. And every once in a while, the fighting is actually passable. Unfortunately, this isn't nearly enough to save such an irreparably flawed movie.
I'd almost recommend seeing The Last Airbender because the full extent of its failure is almost an artform in itself. However, this is one of those rare movies that fails at being a good movie instead of succeeding at being a bad one. In other words, this could at least have been a guilty pleasure or an enjoyably bad movie, but the bottom line is that on top of its technical failures, it simply isn't any fun. For me, this isn't quite the disappointment that The Village was, but that's hardly any consolation at all.
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