I just returned from experiencing the i-Max 3D in-your-face spectacle of James Cameron’s sci-fi extravaganza, Avatar. Long story short: very impressive and very entertaining.

Having read most of the pro reviews out there, I knew there were questions about plot, dialogue and “soul.”  Yes, all three factors are worth considering in a deconstructionist way. Film arts students, pay attention.

The bottom line for any movie is, was it worth the money; your money? Speaking as a bit more than a pure movie buff, since I was executive producer of one very ugly dog of a straight-to-video disaster, I say the answer is a resounding, yes. Doesn’t matter if the flick cost three million or three hundred million, what matters is, did I feel I got a fair deal? In  my case, I paid fifteen dollars, sat dead center in the sixth row for two hours and forty minutes and loved every minute.

The best things about Avatar are the immersive environment of the virtual world, the pace of the action and the efficient execution of a classic plot. The CGI aliens are very believable most of the time. (I’ll get to the deficiencies, later.)  Previous CGI characters were creepy and dead-eyed; nightmare inducing even when they were meant to be warm and fuzzy as in Polar Express. In Avatar, the interaction of natural film actors and the CGI characters works ninety-five percent of the time. Pandora, the planet Avatar is set on, is rendered exquisitely, right down to the dirt. I mean the dirt and mud had the physics of real dirt and mud even when they didn’t have to; at the side of the frame, for example.

Pacing is always an issue in sci-fi. The audience needs action to keep things moving, which contradicts the need to establish a foundation for the fantasy. Exposition tends to be boring. With Avatar, Cameron chose to use a plot so familiar we don’t need much blathering back story. Corporate baddies rape virgin territory. Admirable natives resist. Outsider falls for girl, switches sides. There’s no need to explain it any further. So the film presents its business with no letup.

Much has been said about the incredibly detailed, fluid and gorgeous rendering of Pandora. It’s all true. Really, really nice job.  The color palette is restrained most of the time, adding veracity. The little creepy crawlies, rootlets and ferns are pixel perfect. The movie could almost stand on the basis of an alien world documentary alone.

OK, so what wasn’t perfect about Avatar? Plenty. The CGI did not always play well with the real people in real sets. When the camera view was single-room, the mesh was perfect. However, when the camera was pulled back to medium field, like a basketball court, the CGI characters did not match detail with the real people. Fortunately, those battle scenes were so frenetic that unless you watched for such defects, you wouldn’t see them. Kind of like the missing shadows on the deck in Cameron’s aerial shots in Titanic.

In a similar way, the feel of the cinematography was very different in the human base station versus the Pandoran forest. It’s almost like they were two different filmmaking technologies, though Cameron says they were not. His attempt to make us buy in to the idea that Pandora is a real place and that human and CGI characters are on equal footing was to use a simulated hand-held camera to “film” the arrival of the new troops at the base station. All that did was look phony. Happily, the effect was not repeated.

I was very leery of the 3D aspect of the movie due to the headache inducing 3D of previous ventures. Avatar’s 3D is relatively easy on the brain. No crap flying out of the screen. No roller coaster rides. No headache. Instead, even the vertiginous flying reptile rides were fun. The only stuff that came out of the screen obtrusively was cute, like leaves and jellyfish thingies.

Much has been written about the weakness of the dialogue. Yes, it did suck in many scenes. Fact is, there was so much eye candy to look at and impending drama to worry about that it didn’t matter.

So, plot number thirty-eight was predictable? (You might recall it from Fern Gully and Dances With Wolves.) The characters were cartoonish? So what. Avatar is not about plot, it’s not about character development; it’s all about entertainment. Root for the good guys, boo the bad guys, try not to snicker at the sophomoric moralizing, and enjoy the show. I did.