Magical and magnificent can’t save the messy and mundane. If there is one takeaway from Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s 13-year-long labour of love, and the sequel to the game-changing (visually and financially) Avatar (2009), it is this. And it makes you painfully aware of every minute of its 192-minute runtime, and not in a ‘treasuring every moment’ way.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no stranger to three-hour-plus movies — Bollywood kinda makes it par for the course — and I choose to watch the three-and-a-half-hour extended version of the Lord of the Rings series on my repeat watches. But it is an unforgivable sin to make a movie that is long enough to fit in two FIFA World Cup matches (with extra time) and not do anything new or entertaining.

We are back on Pandora a few years after the Na’vi sent the Sky People (humans) packing. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) already have a brood — the good guy Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), the rebel Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), the friendly Tuktirey (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and the strange Kiri (de-aged Sigourney Weaver), the daughter of a comatose Grace (aged Sigourney Weaver) who the Sullys have adopted. Now they are learning the Na’vi ropes just like Jake did in the first film. Oh, and there is a Mowgli-like human child who they are friends with called Spider (Jake Champion), who is there because he is needed at the end to keep the franchise going.

But, and we know this well, humans are tenacious buggers and keep coming back. This time they are back on Pandora not just to plunder its resources but to colonise it, so that they can ditch an uninhabitable Earth. Because colonising a planet where the gas is poisonous is the only option. We are breathing poison on Earth anyway. And this time they don’t need to fight, they just land their ship and drive the Omaticaya tribe away from the forest to the floating mountains, from where they conduct insurgent raids. And because they are having a reunion, Stephen Lang is back as Colonel Miles Quaritch — the guy Jake and Neytiri killed in the last film, only this time it’s his consciousness uploaded to a Na’vi body — to take out the threat of Jake Sully.

This is where Avatar: The Way of Water (finally!) takes off. The Sullys leave the Omaticaya and travel all the way across the planet to take refuge with the Metkayina, a seafaring Na’vi tribe (If I had not gone through the cast list, I would have never understood which seagreen skin Kate Winslet was under).

The next one hour is spent cavorting in blue waters with stunningly colourful (the colours pop despite the dark 3D glasses) and strange sea creatures. You’ve all seen their airborne counterparts in the first movie. And this is where the film becomes magical and magnificent, because just like the first movie, Cameron’s world-building in The Way of Water is out of this world (no puns intended). If you were paying for one hour in aquaworld, you would be thrilled. But it is also very distracting, because you have no idea where to look as there is so much going on onscreen.

Which is in complete contrast to how little is going on in terms of story development and character building. There seems to be no growth in terms of character for either Jake or Neytiri. The kids go through every single teenage drama trope — first crushes, bullying, finding one’s identity, fitting in, challenging authority, so and so forth. And we are broed (I know that’s not how ‘bored’ is spelt) to death… there are that many ‘bros’ and ‘cuzs’ being thrown around.

In other arcs, Quaritch and his team locate the Sullys and end up destroying things sacred to the Metkayina, instead of the Omaticaya (already done that). Jake just saved his own tribe by endangering another. Bravo!

At this point, we have hit the final third hour of the film and it is only now that the pace picks up. The threat feels real even though the stakes are still not that high. The climactic battle is really long, but visually satisfying. Because something actually happens. Even if it is only to set up the next movie (I wonder if they’ll move to the desert next).

So, here’s my advice. Forget the messy and focus on Messi this weekend. He’ll be blue (and white), he’ll be magical and it is a sure bet he’ll be more entertaining, whether he lifts the World Cup or not.