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You can say this for James Cameron's Avatar, you've never seen anything like it. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing remains an open question after this ambitious journey into a new sci fi world. But I've got to hand it to Cameron for so aggressively paving his own way and creating a new world instead of simply piecing together one from the spare parts of other sagas.

We're taken to the new world of Pandora, where soldiers working for a corporation are looking for a valuable mineral called "unobtanium." The natives don't take kindly to the new alien intruders, so the corporation creates Avatars. They look, and act like the natives, but they're actually controlled by humans through brain waves back in a lab.

Cameron's Avatars look a bit like the bastard step children of refugees from the musical "cats" and the elves from Lord Of The Rings with a little blue smurf dna thrown in. Things get complicated when a military grunt controlling one of the avatars begins to fall for one of the natives and see things from their point of view.

Cameron's visuals once again trump his somewhat ham fisted story telling. He's got old veteran Sigourney Weaver to help, but centerpiece Sam Worthington doesn't have quite enough charisma to paper over his director's weaknesess. But at least he largely avoids the pitfalls that have trapped late period George Lucas- An infatuation with technical gizmos while neglecting to put together simple things like a story, characters, or real human emotion.

Avatar doesn't always succeed, and things get a little silly at times as he pounds home his environmental message with a sledgehammer, but it's worth a trip to the cineplex for something you'll be talking about for a while to come.

Avatar: B