Friday night I went to see Avatar in 3D with my sister, Lynne, at the Cineworld cinema in the Touchwood centre in Solihull. Quite disappointing.
As a, flat, film it would have been OK. Story was good (albeit a pretty blatant rip off of Anne McCaffrery ('Pern' and 'Petabee' series of books) as both Lynne and I noted). Performances were good, mostly (should hove gotten Sam Elliot to play the Colonel).
The problems started in buying the tickets. Firstly the guy behind the counter (Alexander,according to his name badge) was rude from the get go. Then there was an extra charge for the film being in 3D, despite my having an 'Unlimited Card' (perhaps the management of Cineworld need to look up the word Unlimited or rename the card to the "Very Limited' card), which basically doubled the total cost.
When we got in to the screen there were a lot more ads than usual. Then the film started, the film I'd paid an extra charge to see in 3D. I saw no 3rd dimension. Without the glasses on some parts of the screen looked fuzzy or double image (presumably these were the things that were supposed to appear to come out of the screen) but with the glasses on they just looked less fuzzy, not 3 dimensional. There were various standard 3D tricks (e.g. a golf ball being played directly into camera) and I did get feeling of eye strain, possibly from trying to see the 3D stuff.
The next day Lynne sent me a text to say that she had developed a migraine after watching the film.
My recommendation, go see the film but see it flat not 3D, save yourself the price of an extra ticket and a headache.
