I wonder if it isn't about time for Shyamalan to let somebody else do the writing.
Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »
Can high definition improve a mediocre movie? The answer is a definitive yes. Or no, depending on how you define "definitive." My definition is sort of wishy-washy, kind of like the film we're going to discuss. Yes, high definition will definitely enhance one's viewing experience of any film; but, no, high definition will do little to help a film you don't already like.
In any case, I leave it to the reader to like or dislike M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water." What Warner Bros. have done is to put it on an HD-DVD and DVD Combo disc, enabling one to play the movie in either format--the HD-DVD side in an HD-DVD player or the regular DVD side in either an HD-DVD or standard-definition DVD player.
Let's talk movies. When writer-director Shyamalan burst onto the scene in 1999 with "The Sixth Sense," some people hailed him a natural successor to Hitchcock. He is really quite a good cinematic storyteller, with, unfortunately, a diminishing supply of good stories to tell.
In "The Sixth Sense," Shyamalan explored the world of the supernatural to almost universal acclaim. In 2000's "Unbreakable, he explored the world of comic-book superheroes to almost universal indifference, except from me because I enjoyed it. In 2002's "Signs," he worked up a fascinating first half, let down by a wholly prosaic second half. Then, in 2004's "The Village," he started with an intriguing premise that went nowhere. You may see a pattern here, and it's downward. His 2006 entry, "Lady in the Water," continues the free-fall. I wonder if it isn't about time for Shyamalan to let somebody else do the writing. He is certainly more than able to do some creative filmmaking, if he had the right script to work with.
The keep case describes "Lady in the Water" as "a classic bedtime story for a new generation," the director basing the movie on a book he wrote for his kids. Obviously, he meant the picture as a children's fantasy, but he may have also meant it as a rebuttal to those critics who found his previous films lacking in substance or logic. One thing is sure: As a bedtime story, it is likely to put more than a few viewers to sleep.
Things got off to an inauspicious start when Buena Vista, who had helped produce and distribute the director's first four major motion pictures, declined to do this one. Shyamalan took the script to Warner Bros. to get it made. Maybe BV knew something WB didn't. Now that I've had a chance to see it, I'd have to say the powers that be at Buena Vista were right. The movie is something of a shambles.
Now, understand, I have nothing against fantasies--for children or adults. Most of the biggest moneymaking films of all time, and some of my favorites, are traditional or sci-fi fantasies: "Lord of the Rings," "Harry Potter," "Star Wars," "Jurassic Park," and the like. But good fantasies have to create and adhere to their own internal consistencies; they can't just make stuff up as they go along and hope against all odds the audience will suspend its disbelief. I mean, even fairy tales need to make some sense. Instead, "Lady in the Water" throws together secret worlds, crossword puzzles, cereal boxes, cookbooks, butterflies, prophecies, magical eagles, peculiar guilds, mysterious guardians, automatic sprinklers, and monsters made out of grass, with the tale getting more preposterous as it goes along. OK, maybe Shyamalan meant it as a comedy.
Back when I taught English, about once a year I used to ask my students to play a creative-writing game. I'd start them off with an opening line, and then I'd have them continue it for a few minutes until I asked them to pass their papers to the persons behind them. This would go on for thirty or forty minutes, with everybody adding to everybody's else's story, and everybody having a good time. Even the most reluctant writers joined in the fun. But it was the process, not the end result, that was important. The finished stories were a mess. I thought of this little exercise as I was watching "Lady in the Water." The only difference is that Shyamalan got paid for his script.
The movie goes in all different directions, starting on a moralistic note, becoming humorous, feisty, and satiric along the way, introducing elements of the wondrous and the horrific, and ending up preachy and sentimental. Actually, that sounds a lot like a typical fairy tale, and this one might have worked, too, had not Shyamalan piled on so many exaggerations in so haphazard a way.
It's all about narfs. According the movie, a narf is a sea nymph. And according to the movie, there's a narf living under an apartment-house swimming pool in Philadelphia. Who'da thunk? Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), the apartment manager, first discovers the narf, whose name is Story (Bryce Dallas Howard). She is the "Lady" of the title, a Madam Narf, one sent from a secret undersea kingdom to the world of humans in order to help them (if only they will listen). But she has to be careful of skrunks--evil, wolflike creatures out to kill narfs who venture onto land. She also has to find the person she is helping and then find a guardian who will assist her in returning to her world.
Giamotti is his usual sad-sack, common-guy self, this time an unhappy fellow with a tragic incident in his past and a stutter in his present, who almost instantly believes Story's story, understands her plight, and determines to aid her. The movie gives no explanation why any sane man would do this.
The first half of the film is, frankly, boring. The Wife-O-Meter suggested that it would have been better if Shyamalan had created more mystery in the beginning, instead of immediately showing us the narf and explaining all about her. Once the filmmaker spells everything out for us in the first fifteen or twenty minutes, the rest of the plot simply unfolds in a jumbled series of incomprehensible events.
Story isn't sure for whom she is looking, and Heep isn't sure how to get her home. Therefore, they enlist the support of some of the other tenants, all of them stereotypical apartment-house dwellers. Miraculously, they all believe her story, too. Say, maybe this is a comedy after all. Or, more precisely, a satiric comedy, as Shyamalan pokes fun at his own detractors through the character of an arrogant, snobby, standoffish, know-it-all movie and book critic, Harry Farber (Bob Balaban). Remember when the T-Rex attacked the attorney in "Jurassic Park," and audiences screamed "Eat the lawyer"? Same thing here. Gotta be a comedy.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]20201[/release]