Real Virtuality: This review has spoilers, but we do not call them so because everyone and their other half (or quarter or eighth or any fraction you like) has seen the film.

The best thing about watching THE FILM OF THE YEAR after it becomes THE FILM OF THE YEAR is that your reaction to it becomes so easy to classify. You either LOVE it enough to want marry your first born/leave your inheritance/ write odes on blogger or compose tweets to the director or HATE it enough to do the same. The decision depends on whether you are a dittohead who swears by what they said after omg!!!! at the Golden Globes/ SAGs/ Oscars/ replace film appreciation society or if your strongest opinions are expressed in internet forums expressing alternate opinions.

So it was only providential (ok Richard Dawkinseal- wicked atheist and all that!) that we got turned away from the 3D theater two times before watching Avatar. Or in Na'avi terms "We weren't ready."

Only that the reaction is not quite as easy to classify. I mean with Slumdog Millionaire, Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (or is it the dragon that crouches) even No Country for Old Men it was easy for me to be a sellout. But this movie is harder.

Visually it is mind blowingly brilliant, awe-inspiringly gorgeous. And for goodness' sake the guy invented a whole language and evolved flora and fauna with Latin classifications( I guess even the Na'avi could not beat Linnaeus) to live in the alien world- which I must say is impressively alien. Where else can you have this excitingplanet with an unbreathable atmosphere and humanish creatures which are interconnected to all life. Where else but in vintage Asimov( Green patches anyone?). Hey but that is the good part. Also the cat people. I cannot help but have only good feelings for a feline-friendly director.

The innate human-ness of everything is the other part. Noble savages. Extremely evil humans bent on mining unobtainium at any cost. That too. A whole language and then UNOBTAINIUM, James Cameron, you could have done better! And the whole former bad guy turns Toruk Makto after learning the way.

But it is not just awesome looking film with crappy story. Nope, that classification is too simplified. Nor is it jerky director's post white guilt feel good film- it lacks the gravitas to be so. Both gravitas and story.

Because it is for lack of a better word uber-cool. In an Apple Products kind of way. Uber-cool and way too designed for the function it should serve. Though unlike Apple i-Pads, every Pandoran being has USBs and ports , even those that connect to a universal grand central docking station.