So many of these movies simply slap a world up on the screen without bothering to invite you in. You waste two hours of your life watching piss-pot characters bark out the arbitrary details of their inane, meaningless struggles, arcs and journeys. So is the case with The Last Airbender, where fire, water, earth and air peoples can employ---or "bend"---the forces of the elements at will and spend their time fighting with each other over it. This film makes you feel director M. Night Shyamalan's talent like a phantom limb. The movie is braying and soulless and dull. The one pleasure comes from sporadic, inopportune use of a homophobic, derogatory Brit-slang, as when characters exclaim of a youngster, "This child is a bender!" And it's a sick, smug, snickering pleasure at that. The Last Airbender brings out the worst in everyone.
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