Vatican Calls James Cameron's Avatar Bland

Tuesday, January 12, 2010, 14:13

The Vatican has called James Cameron's 'Avatar' as bland, cliched and over-sentimental.

The science fiction film, which has taken 1 billion dollars at the box office, has received scathing reviews from Vatican Radio as well as the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

The futuristic 3-D adventure, which will be released in Italy this week, has received generally favourable reviews in the United States and Britain.

The movie depicts a place in 2154 on the planet Pandora, light years away from the Earth, where humans have established an environmentally destructive mining colony. However, the epic movie has failed to impress the Catholic Church hierarchy in Rome.

“It has a great deal of enchanting, stunning technology, but few genuine or human emotions," reports the L'Osservatore Romano.

However, the Vatican appreciated that the “spectacle" of the film was worth the price of a cinema ticket.

There were harsh words too from Vatican Radio, which accused the film of "being a wink towards the pseudo-doctrines which have made ecology the religion of the millennium.