AVATAR

WOW. What a great movie this is. Just ignore the trifling criticisms you've been hearing, about stock characters and flat acting. (Most of the story's animated, facryinoutloud. Who acts in a cartoon?) Ignore the fact that they stole music from The Perfect Storm (quite appropriately, if you ask me) and sound effects from Jurassic Park. Just go see it, RIGHT NOW. LET ME TELL YOU WHY:

>> The core of the story is a subject dear to EVERY TWO-CHAMBERED HEART: interspecies romance.

>> The forests of planet Pandora are CRAWLING WITH OCEAN LIFE. Sea Lilies! Feather-Duster Worms! Jellyfish! Terrifying Hammerheads! Something new everywhere you look! When I left the theater and got on the road for home, I could hardly fail to notice the contrast between that lush, green, growing place lit by luminous plants and this cold, dead, concrete-paved one, lit by Christmas lights. If my eyes could still produce tears, they would have, all the way home to my tank.

>> One of my favorite touches is the bioluminenscence that sputters to life wherever someone steps in the forest, and becomes subtly omnipresent when the sun sets. Just like home!

>> The LIPs (or Local Indigenous Personnel) on Pandora are blue-skinned, marked with subtle stripes and spots, very long hair and great luminous eyes -- strongly reminiscent of a certain model of operative that has since been discontinued because their alluring presence proved a little too overwhelming for the Naked Apes to handle. And it is one of these that causes a Shaved Monkey to fall in love with her, GO OVER THE WALL and take up arms against his own species. Nuff said?

>> The message of this story is ENTIRELY POSITIVE: Even the seemingly invincible Shaved Monkeys have their tactical weaknesses, AND WE WILL PREVAIL. I also like the implied message that we don't need to recruit them all, and make them all into versions of US, to get there. We will prevail ANYWAY.

WE WILL.