The Vatican has called James Cameron's Avatar bland, cliched and overly-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.
It takes place in 2154 on the planet Pandora, light years away from Earth, where humans have established an environmentally-destructive mining colony.
However, the epic movie has failed to impress the Catholic Church hierarchy in Rome, reports the Telegraph.
"It has a great deal of enchanting, stunning technology, but few genuine or human emotions," wrote L'Osservatore Romano.
"Its significance is in its visual impact rather than in the story, and in its messages, despite the fact that they are hardly new.
"Cameron, concentrating on the creation of the fantasy world of Pandora, chooses a bland approach. He tells the story without any profound exploration," L'Osservatore Romano added.
{{/usCountry}}"Cameron, concentrating on the creation of the fantasy world of Pandora, chooses a bland approach. He tells the story without any profound exploration," L'Osservatore Romano added.
{{/usCountry}}The Vatican newspaper said that the plot descends into sentimentality, and "a rather facile anti-imperialist and antimilitarist parable which doesn't have the same bite as other more serious films."
However, it concluded 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."
Vatican Radio said that Avatar's faults meant that it would not go down in the annals of cinema history.