Lady in the Water

I did a lot of research, reading what other people had said about this movie. I was trying to understand why so many people thought this was a good movie. And I must confess: I've failed at understand why so many people adore M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water. I just don't understand why people are giving this film praise.

Now, I'm not a fan of Shyamalan's work, so I perhaps am being bias here. And I'll try to leave my dislike of his work out as much as I can when talking about this film. Here is my argument:

The film takes the stance of a fairy tale: a whimsical story about a water nymph that needs to return to her world, thus becoming the new queen, and restoring balance to the universe. That's fine. If you go into this film knowing that it's a bedtime story, the result won't be so bad.

The dialogue is sloppy. There's nothing more that really needs to be said. The characters that interact feel flat, and dimensionless. The only characters that have any depth to them are that of Cleveland (Paul Giamatti) and Vic Ran (M. Night Shyamalan.) Cleveland is haunted by the loss of his family, and for some reason, has an attachment to a journal, or some book, that he is writing. It's never very clear. He suffers from the loss, and uses his emotions later in the film to save the nymph.

Vic Ran, the only other character with depth, and of course played by Shyamalan (which I think is ridiculous and self indulgent,) is a writer who learns that his words are going to change the world. He is writing a book, and it will inspire a man later in life to become president, and bring the nation together. Personally, I thought this was narcissistic nonsense.

The floods of characters make the plot suffer, and each person even less real to me. We have characters such as a body builder, who works on building only half of his body, and a self narrating film critic, who offers a commentary of the film as it progresses. Though I thought this was an interesting approach to post-modern characters, it didn't work as well as I'm sure Shyamalan had hoped. It was distracting, and pointless in this film.

And then we dip into the realm of the ridiculous. We have such holes in logic as this: a child is needed to read a message hidden in cereal boxes, which gives him information as to how to help the nymph return home. What this child pulls from cereal boxes is random and disjointed, and beyond reason. And what's more, he comes back later and states "I made a mistake, it said him, not her!" Cereal boxes!

At best, this film plays out like an extended Nickelodeon Are You Afraid of the Dark, written by R. L. Stiene. The dialogue is a mess, and even with his talent, Giamatti was unable to pull off a decent character in this story. His stuttering, bumbling character doesn't entertain; instead, it drags us through 2 hours of campy writing, and average camera work.

When I think of Shyamalan, I think of his work in the Sixth Sense, or Signs, and I was hoping that some of that strange atmosphere would pour over into this film. No such luck! It's a drab apartment building with a colorful mix of carbon-copied characters.

Oh, there's so much more to talk about, but I'll leave it at that. This film grossed 17 million on opening weekend, the lowest ever for any of his films. If you're thinking about seeing this, I suggest one of three things:

1) Wait for the dollar theater

2) Bring Pepto

3) Bring Rum for your $4.50 coke.

What a mess! 4 of 10