“Imaginative” is the first word that comes to mind when discussing Avatar, and “boring” is the other.

Avatar is only technically impressive.

This is the supposed benchmark for American film today, and it’s a perfect example. All gloss and no brain. A standard action formula plot dressed up with amazing computer animated sets and paraded out in IMAX 3-D.

I won’t waste your time overly detailing a plot that could have been spewed from a screenwriting software program.

Anyone familiar with any standard American action film or the “Going Native” formula used by Dances With Wolves, will know from the start that our militaristic hero will see the error of his ways, fall in love with his peaceful new world (and a local beauty), go native, rise to a position of respect in the native culture, but then get temporarily banished before finally rising to unite his new comrades in an explosive battle royale that won’t end until our hero fights the lead villain in individual combat. Nothing new there.

Also, Avatar’s story-based attempt to create a New Agey eco-parable strikes a hollow note, while it wars with the standard might-makes-right philosophy endemic to its action formula.

The MPAA warns us of Avatar’s “intense battle scenes,” but why? This is PG-13 war. There’s little blood, no piles of dead women and children, no howling mothers or screaming fathers, no casualty triage, no traumatic aftermath, just the wiz-bang and nearly eroticized sci-fi hardware that keeps our kids adrenalized and dumb with fantasies of bloodless war, before they line up to join the Army.

Avatar succeeds on one level alone, as an eye-popping visual confection, and on that level, you might enjoy the empty calories. I was entertained by this eye candy well enough, but now a week later, it’s a fading memory. Lacking profundity, resonance, intrigue, heart-touching characters or story, Avatar may be the most expensive temporary diversion every constructed.