I have the Avatar blues. But not like bad blues, like I’m sad, but like good blues, like I’m happy listening to sad music about people wanting to be happy. Here goes:
Pandora = I want to go to there. Why? Cause it’s pretty awesome. The lives of the Na’vi are exciting, colorful and everyone looks like they just finished P90X for Sasquatches. Maybe it was the fashionable 3D glasses, the latte I had before the movie or my insatiable need to escape reality (it’s -1 degrees today, people) but I enjoyed the heck out of that film.
I know some of you elitist dialoguists are squirming with every good review you read for this movie. “The writing sucks!” you say. Well, yes, the dialogue was nothing to throw a pencil at. (side note: since when did throwing a stick, pencil or anything related to potential injury denote positivism? “It’s nothing to throw a stick at. But if it were really good, I’d pelt it with sticks.”) To continue; the writing may not have been phenomenal, but the movie made my palms sweat. My legs shook. I barfed a little. It was THAT good. Or my salmon dinner was THAT bad.
Picture this: you’re 10 feet tall and you get to navigate the canopy of a forest by jumping, eating bright purple goo from a nilly willy funk plant and ride an animal that’s half horse, half anteater. You get to fly on the back of an airborne dinosaur that beckons to you like a puppy. You get to put your hair inside of its ear. Does life get any better than this? Plus, no one really gets old. Except for that one guy at the end. (Even fantasy worlds have diversity requirements.) He only has 3 seconds of air time though. Much like 99% of the actors in L.A., “Did you see me in Ghost Dad? do you see my ponytail? My ankle? Squint harder.” The best part is, they’re in this incredibly dense forest with so many animals and plants and not once, NOT ONCE did I see any of them swat at a bug. Folks, stop your search. This is utopia. It’s a beautiful bug-free rain forest.
Take me there now. I see it. I know, I know. It would be hard to give up a full-time job with part-time benefits and an apartment that (thanks to the neighbors) constantly smells like skunk weed, a dog I don’t have and the luxury of a car that if it starts, I feel a sense of accomplishment. In Pandora, anytime you’re sad, you just stick your hair in something. An animal, a tree, yourself (that part was omitted from the film, but I can imagine a lonely Avatar just might toy with the idea.)
Readers, if you don’t hear from me for awhile, I may be in a long coffin-like drawer, pretending to be dead while I dream of being a big blue person that hops from tree to tree and worships a weeping willow made of rope lights. Southwest usually has good deals to other states, but what about states of mind? Planets? I’m feeling a little blue…
