Avatar: great ideas soggily sunk by endless self-indulgence

The frustration is that there is so much that is so very, very good here. The sadness is that the soaring ambition of James Cameron’s imagination is so completely and utterly sunk by the sheer soggy self-indulgence of its execution. You could fit two World Cup semi-finals into its three hour 12 minutes running time – and still have time to fit in most of the first half of extra time. It’s only eight minutes shorter than my fastest ever marathon. The point is that you could use those three hours-plus so much more fruitfully than Cameron does here in what the promoters are calling his long-awaited sequel – though I really can’t believe that anyone awaited it terribly much.

A measure of the first film – in what is now obviously a series – is that it is now so totally unmemorable beyond the vaguest stirrings of it being really quite impressive to watch. And the same is certainly true this time. There are some stunning images, a painterly eye so often at work. It’s just a shame that Cameron set out to fill an over-large art gallery. There are moments of tension, moments of impact, but they are diluted time and time again in the soggy world he has created and the soggy length he has allowed it to run for.

The gist is that Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), picking up from the last film, is living with the blue meanies known as the Na’vi, a weird pointy-eared tribe he infiltrated last time to the extent of hooking up with warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and spawning various children and adopting stepdaughter Kiri. There is lots of intergenerational exploration, lots of focus on the children – products of two tribes, human and Na’vi – trying to find themselves. But the real threat, as ever, are those nasty humans, particularly marine colonel Miles Quaritch (mysteriously transformed into Na’vi himself along with the rest of his team), desperate to avenge himself for Jake’s betrayal as he sees it. The trouble is that we are more than two hours into it all before any of it really seems to get going, Jake and his family cosying up with the Metkayina. They are the green ones, but even then it’s awfully difficult to tell any of them apart, just as Jake and his brood are pretty indistinguishable – though they probably say much the same about humans.

But at least it moves the story on a little, with the forest dwellers clashing with the sea dwellers, particularly amongst the kiddies. But will they find a way to work together? Of course they will. It’s just that it’s certainly not going to happen quickly. Nothing does in this film.

Finally we reach the showdown and it’s pretty dramatic stuff, very effectively done, but even then Cameron really can’t leave it alone. This really is the film that refuses to finish. Just try not to eat your sweeties all at once. But definitely do consider a snooze somewhere in the middle. It will certainly help things along. Or maybe pop out and finish your Christmas shopping? You can be sure you won’t miss terribly much. There is a terrific film in here somewhere. Such a shame Cameron didn’t have the courage to grasp it and lose maybe 90 minutes in the process.