Avatar
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: December 18, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
33
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of "Avatar." Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in "Avatar" serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story. Read full review
100
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)
It's been twelve years since "Titanic," but the King of the World has returned with a flawed but fantastic tour de force that, taken on its merits as a film, especially in two dimensions, warrants four stars. However, if you can wrap a pair of 3D glasses round your peepers, this becomes a transcendent, full-on five-star experience that's the closest we'll ever come to setting foot on a strange new world. Just don't leave it so long next time, eh, Jim? Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Once again, [Cameron] has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely. Read full review
100
PremiereNick Starkey
This is, simply put, one of the most beautiful movies you’ll ever see. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
A quantum leap in movie magic; watching it, I began to understand how people in 1933 must have felt when they saw "King Kong." Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Avatar is entertainment of the highest order. It's the best movie of 2009. Read full review
100
L.A. Weekly
At the end of a decade defined by much bellyaching about "the death of cinema" (including, on occasion, by this critic), Avatar concludes, appropriately enough, with an image of rebirth. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Pantheism, Cameronism: In Avatar, what's the diff? Now he's king of a world he made from scratch. Read full review
100
ColliderMarco Vito Oddo
Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other. Every frame is developed with such care that the movie remains one of the most beautiful works of art ever created by Hollywood. [2022 re-release] Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Avatar is all-enveloping and transporting, with Cameron & Co.'s years of R&D paying off with a film that, as his work has done before, raises the technical bar and throws down a challenge for the many other filmmakers toiling in the sci-fi/fantasy realm. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
Embrace the movie -- surely the most vivid and persuasive creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures -- as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual experience. Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The movie's story may be a little trite, and the big battle at the end between ugly mechanical force and the gorgeous natural world goes on forever, but what a show Cameron puts on! The continuity of dynamized space that he has achieved with 3-D gloriously supports his trippy belief that all living things are one. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special. Read full review
90
SlateDana Stevens
Is it or is it not stupendously friggin' rad? And the answer is yes. For most of the first hour, a good portion of the second, and even many of the 40 minutes left after that, Avatar is stupendously friggin' rad. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge Ebiri
Avatar may be derivative, but it’s not insincere. Cameron clearly feels every beat of the story along with his viewer. He lets us discover Pandora through Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) eyes, first as a fearsome, terrifying place, then as a land of unimaginable awe and delight. [2022 re-release] Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Tone-deaf but thunderously exciting. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
Rarely less than absorbing and never boring over its nearly three-hour length. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
An entertainment to be not just seen but absorbed on a molecular level; it's as close to a full-body experience as we'll get until they invent the holo-suits. Cameron aims for sheer wonderment, and he delivers. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Avatar delivers. Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility - not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry - the movie quite simply rocks. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
If I never felt entirely transported by Avatar, it's probably because the story thudded just as often as the imagery soared. But Pandora is still a good place to park yourself for three hours. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Is it a great movie? Maybe not. But it is a great step forward in moviemaking. Shrug it off if that makes you feel better, but starting today you live in a post-Avatar movie world. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The first 90 minutes of Avatar are pretty terrific - a full-immersion technological wonder with wonders to spare. The other 72 minutes, less and less terrific. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
As visual spectacle, Avatar is indelible, but as a movie it all but evaporates as you watch it. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The scenes in Pandora -- a planet with an Earth-like environment -- are so breathtaking that the narrative seems almost beside the point. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
Titanic technical achievement. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
By presenting Avatar in 3-D, Cameron is staking his claim and building a fence around his own precious resource, making it unobtainable on any but his own terms to increasingly emboldened and technologically savvy natives. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Avatar is a king's ransom fairly well spent, not least because Cameron's invitation into his superbly crafted universe comes with an unexpected price: He makes it easy to gaze fondly on all this movie magic, but only in exchange for a hard look at ourselves. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy Biancolli
Vast, beautiful and meticulously detailed. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Avatar is a technological wonder, 15 years percolating in King Cameron's imagination and inarguably the greatest 3-D cavalry western ever made. Too bad that western is "Dances With Wolves." Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Whatever faults Avatar may have -- and there are many -- the movie succeeds in immersing you in a photorealistic, painstakingly detailed world more fully than any science fiction movie before. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith Uhlich
The question lingers as the movie comes to its triumphant body-swapping close: Is this a pro-environment parable or a prophecy of virtual realities yet to come? Cameron's new world may very well be a verdant Matrix. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Avatar clears the hurdle in terms of being optical candy. Its story, though, is pure cheese. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Avatar is a weak patchwork of his other films: the leaden voiceover from "Terminator 2" here, the military/civilian conflict from "Aliens" there, even a Jack-and-Rose-style forbidden love story cued to adult-contempo soundtrack. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It is a very expensive-looking, very flashy entertainment, albeit one that groans under the weight of clumsy storytelling in the second half and features some of the most godawful dialogue this side of "Attack of the Clones." Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
The sheer laborious silliness of Avatar feels like harder work the second time around and its essential problem is more prominent. [2022 re-release] Read full review
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