The writing is horrible. The direction is confusing. The editing skips around. The acting is all line reading and posing surrounded by special effects. The 3D isn’t impressive. The Last Airbender is simply a horrible movie in every way.

Based on a super fun Nickelodeon cartoon, M. Night Shyamalan makes a movie that at times at least looks cool, but the finished product merely coasts on the goodwill and reputation of the animated original. My 10 year old son, who ate up the show and should have been the easy-to-please target audience of this movie, agreed that it was boring.

Here’s the story. There are magical people in some alternative quasi-Asian culture called Benders that can control earth, fire, and water. The Airbenders were all wiped out by the evil Firebenders, who plan on taking over the world. But one escaped (a child named Aang), was frozen in an iceberg for 100 years, and emerges to save the day. You see, he’s the Avatar, and can control all 4 elements, and apparently is the biggest threat to the Firebenders plan.

What proceeds is a gibberish filled mess of a journey that makes no sense unless you’ve seen the cartoon. Our hero wanders around with his buddies, and is told he has to learn how to master water, earth, and fire. Instead of cool training scenes where the audience can see the character progressing with lessons, exercise, and actual trial and error, you simply see Aang watch folks wiggle their arms around. They may as well have called this movie Tai Chi: The Motion Picture.

The 3D is awful. Clearly thrown in there as an afterthought, aside from some cool opening credits, the rest of the film was simply converted from 2D. Characters with fur rimmed hoods just look bizarre with the fibers on their coats mystically way behind their heads in a perspective gaffe. And a fight scene featuring two people shooting fire and water at each other, which should have been a fun immersive experience for the audience, is lamed up with simple left to right horizontal action, as if you’re watching someone play Mortal Kombat. What’s the use of 3D if you’re not going to have anything actually pop out?

There’s no less than 3 scenes that take place in a weird blurry meditative state when Aang goes into a trance and talks to a dragon. Everything is double imaged and blurry ON PURPOSE to add to the dreamy effect, which makes it feel as if you’ve suddenly developed cataracts. I would rank these the worst 3D scenes to watch in movie history.

The acting is ridiculously bad. I love Aasif Mandvi as a comedian on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and he’s same sarcastic goofy style is used as a bad guy here. His performance is delivered with an odd style that makes you think he’s going to start laughing at any time. It’s just awful.

Noah Ringer plays the lead role of the young Aang without an ounce of glee. In the cartoon, he’s a kid who’s just fine with his destiny, but still has fun whooping it up, smiling ear to ear, and playing with his flying pets. He wanders through this film with an angsty melancholic demeanor that is depressing to watch throughout.

Every audience member and critic I listened to walking out of the film was mumbling about how horrible it was. I heard comments to the studio representative like “excruciating” and “a total waste of time”. Mind you, this was a free showing, so that’s saying a lot.

Honestly, Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense was a pretty great film, but his movies have been progressively worse since. He’s lost so much goodwill in his last 2 movies, this was a great chance to liven things up. How do you screw up a movie based on a super popular cartoon that’s all about magic and fun? Apparently, all it takes is to let Shyamalan write and direct it.

With the new Twilight film opening this week, and Toy Story 3 and Grown Ups showing no signs of slowing down, it’ll be a small miracle if this film opens past the #4 spot. A bigger miracle, still, if they ever make a sequel. The Last Airbender may be one of those aborted series like The Golden Compass and Eragon that failed to honor the source material properly, and leave the audience hanging.