Many reviewers have had overall reactions that were positive, while still mentioning that the plot, acting, characterization, and dialog are unimpressive. I didn't say "lots of reviewers have rated it poorly", I said lots of reviewers have pointed out the same shortcomings that gwahir and I have.

If you actually read through those reviews on rottentomatoes, including the Top Critics reviews, you will find that most reviewers make mention of those shortcomings but still gave the film a positive rating because it was so visually impressive. Looking over the POSITIVE reviews in the rottentomatoes Top Critics section, I see the following phrases used to describe the plot and characters and dialog of Avatar: "Corny", "a cartoon", "the Michael Bay demographic", "a crock", "predictable", "tin-eared", "clumsy", "cliche-filled", "dramatically simple-minded", "childishly two-dimensional", and my favorite, "10-foot blue people re-enact the plot of Pocahontas". Again, all of these were taken from the POSITIVE Top Critics reviews, and I only skimmed a handful of those reviews to find these phrases. I'm sure that a comprehensive search would find many more, since every review I looked at seemed to say something about how unimpressive the plot, dialog, or acting was.

So to repeat myself: If you read reviews of this movie, you will find plenty of people airing the same criticisms that gwahir and I have made. That doesn't mean all reviewers hated it, but they DID all pretty much notice that the script, performances, and plot were weak.

Nice try though.

Quote Originally Posted by solecistic
Well, I enjoyed the movie. I don't feel the need to write four hundred pages about why it was good (nor could I), because it's just possible that I have no taste whatsoever and the fact that I enjoyed this movie makes me a plebeian and a moron.
I enjoyed it too, as I said to UnreasonablyReasonable earlier in the thread. I had fun watching it, it looked great and it was an entertaining action movie. In fact I'll probably go see it again this week. It's numerous flaws don't stop it from being enjoyable, they are just somewhat disappointing coming from James Cameron, since he has a track record of making great sci-fi/action movies that don't suffer from those flaws. And honestly most of what I've said about it's flaws in this thread has been in response to people claiming those flaws don't exist; I' m not just shitting on it because I hated it so much or something like that.