I enjoyed the hell out of Avatar. It was a fun two-and-a-half hours, and my wife and i actually contemplated shelling out another $16.50 each to see it on IMAX a second time.
i also thought it was an incredibly awful movie. Ham-fisted allegory, embarrassingly bad dialog, caricatures for characters, mediocre acting, and a storyline as banal as laundry day and as predictable as sunrise.
It had everything and nothing. It was a triumph of technology and visuals, and a disaster in every other respect. I think its long-term significance will be simply as a vehicle for introducing audiences to the new technology*; in the future, much better film-makers than James Cameron will combine that technology properly with the other aspects of film-making to produce well-rounded, interesting, and truly great movies.
- And also the oodles of money it made.