Avatar (12A)

THERE'S only one word to describe Avatar. And it's taken me the best part of a week to work out what it is.

Because truth is, for this new film from Titanic director James Cameron, normal, common or garden words will just not do.

Spectacular? Exciting? Beautiful? Unique? Yes, yes, yes and oh HELL yes. But we're still only scratching the surface here.

So what IS the word? We'll get to that. But first, you should know that as the most loudly trumpeted film of the decade, Avatar has a lot to prove from the off.

Here's the thing. It proves it all. Hard.

Improbably, this live-action, 3D, romantic sci-fi epic - 14 painstaking years and £150 million in the making - really IS the revolution it's being touted as.

And it WILL change the way big movies are made - in at least one important way.

Every director who decides to crank out a blockbuster from now on will cry themselves to sleep at night, in the firm knowledge it probably won't be even three per cent as good as Avatar.

In case you've missed the multiple hype-gasms over the last few weeks, Avatar is a tale about Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a young, wheelchair- bound ex-marine who travels to the distant planet of Pandora, where humans are harvesting a mineral that will solve the energy crisis back home on 22nd- century Earth.

And the mineral is called - ready? - "unobtainium". (Now come on, Jim, I love your movie but what names did you turn down in favour of that stinker? MacGuffinite? Plottion Device-atrate?)

After the death of his hotshot twin brother, Jake's a last-minute draft for the Avatar programme - a diplomatic effort where humans have their minds transplanted into alien bodies and act as go-betweens with the Na'vi - Pandora's 10ft-tall, bright blue natives.

Inconveniently, the Na'vi village is slap-bang on top of the biggest unobtainium deposit for hundreds of miles.

Warmongering colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and mining boss Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) want to smoke them out. But biologist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) wants to use the avatars to gain the Na'vi's trust and find another solution.

So Jake plods off to the Na'vi village to infiltrate their ranks. But he doesn't reckon on falling for their incredible world and way of life - not to mention one of the local sorts, warrior princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Biggest concern is whether the much-hyped 3D visuals - filmed with an ambitious new camera system invented by Cameron himself - pass muster in the cold light of day.

Let's put it this way. There was a running gag on the internet when the first details of the film leaked out that Avatar would "f*** your eyeballs". That ain't quite how it works.

Avatar will meet your eyeballs in a chance encounter at a chic Parisian street café, pull them on to the back of a Vespa and whisk them to a fine restaurant.

It will then bring them to a sumptuous hotel, carry them over the threshold of the Presidential Suite, lay them down on fresh silk sheets...

And give them the hardest r*dger- ing since Tiger Woods' wife last said: "I'll be out of town for a week, honeybun. Be good."

This is a new benchmark. The Na'vi look as reach-out-and-squeeze-'em real as 10ft-tall blue cat people ever could. That weird living waxwork-look that's plagued all previous "realistic" computer-generated characters (up to and including Disney's recent Christmas Carol) is nowhere to be seen. These people have soul.

But it's not just the visuals that are of a world-beating standard. Every aspect of this film has been polished to a blazing shine.

The plot is up there with the very best blockbuster yarns. The performances are note-perfect (Quaritch, in particular, is one of the most brilliantly boo-able screen baddies in eons). The script is honed to perfection - there's not a single clunky line or duff delivery that breaks the spell.

And the climactic action sequence - a 20-minute tear-up between the human and Na'vi armies - is the biggest awards- baiting, game-changing visual-effects sequence since that Star Destroyer rumbled across the top of a cinema screen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Best film of the year? Easy. Best film of the decade? Don't be daft - that's There Will Be Blood. Second best film of the decade? Yes, I'll have that.

Watching Avatar for the first time is an experience all of its own that, frankly, I'm a bit miffed I'll never be able to go through again.

The genius opening and closing shots say it all. It starts with just one eye open, and it ends with two.

It's not like watching Lord of the Rings for the first time - or Jurassic Park or Star Wars or anything else. And as far as I can see, there's only one word that sums up all the above.

Avatar.

Avatar is Avatar. It's like nothing else you've ever seen. And believe me - you need to see it.

OUT THURSDAY

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