Do you ever feel cheated? If the Sex Pistols once perpetrated the great rock 'n' roll swindle, it's quite possible that with his new movie M. Night Shyamalan has perpetrated the great supernatural thriller swindle. Lady in the Water is so ridiculous, so self-important, so unbelievably clueless that you have to wonder if Shyamalan is playing a joke on his fans. Surely he can't be so genuinely arrogant and narcissistic as to make this two-hour tribute to his own genius with a straight face?
I can't explain the movie's pointlessly convoluted mythology without breaking into hysterics. Let's just say this: There's a lady, and she's in the water, and her name is Story. Surely that could not be allegorical? The water she's in is a pool at an apartment complex called the Cove, superintended by stuttering sad-sack Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti, who knows his sad-sacks). Cleveland fishes Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) out of the water, and immediately believes her when she tells him about all this mumbo-jumbo involving creatures called "narfs" and "scrunts" and an "Eatlon" and the "Tartutic." Trust me, you don't want to know what any of those things are.
Story has come out of the water, naturally, to save humanity, which is generally the reason mythical creatures emerge from mythical lands. What's tougher to believe is that Cleveland just goes right along with her bizarre ramblings, no questions asked, and eventually gets all the residents of the apartment complex, which is apparently populated solely by stereotypes, to go along with her, too, with nary a skeptical word uttered.
I Survived Little Man! |
We couldn't see the Wayans' Bros. latest film in time to review it last week. But our critic went anyway and lived long enough to file this: I had been assaulted with the Little Man trailer a few months ago, and this fiasco did not disappoint. The critics seated to the left and right of me lasted about 15 and 20 minutes, respectively, before walking out. But I stayed. I stayed through each and every whacked-in-the-groin joke (maybe a dozen?—I lost count). I stayed through the obligatory chase scene. I stayed through the violent football game in which children are smacked down. I stayed through all the fart noises and pee jokes. I stayed for the Molly Shannon and Rob Schneider cameos. I stayed for every shot in which the CGI of Marlon Wayans' head didn't quite match up with the little person's stunt body. And I felt ashamed and unclean.
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And how, you wonder, is Story, with the help of her newfound friends, going to save humanity? Why, by inspiring a writer to create a world-changing work of art that will spur people to transcend their petty differences. That writer is played by Shyamalan himself, in a role much larger than any he's taken in his previous thrillers. Do you begin to see how hard it is to take this stuff seriously, especially given how seriously Shyamalan takes it himself? It'd be like Mel Gibson casting himself as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
Whatever their flaws, Shyamalan's past films have at least been thrilling, but since no one questions Story's, er, story, Lady in the Water has very little dramatic tension, and its only scares come from a silly-looking dog-like creature (that'd be a scrunt, if you must know) that menaces Story. Shyamalan more often makes awkward and ill-advised stabs at humor that only prove how out of touch he is with real human interaction. Not only are the apartment complex's denizens a bunch of credulous clichés, but they all speak in well-crafted self-help platitudes and learn to value finding their purpose in life.
All of them, that is, except film critic Mr. Farber (Bob Balaban), a wet blanket who heaps scorn on the very idea of stories and dares to assume he knows what motivates others to create great works. As the embodiment of anyone who ever said anything bad about him gets torn apart by a scrunt, you wonder if Shyamalan has crossed from mere self-regard into actual mental illness.
Pity the cast that has to prop up such a gigantic ego. Giamatti does his usual fine work, but Howard, so luminous as the best thing in Shyamalan's last film, the misguided The Village, just gets to stare blankly and speak without using contractions. You could argue that Shyamalan has evolved as a storyteller because Lady in the Water lacks one of his trademark twist endings, but as the movie wore on, I kept wishing one would come along and prove that the story wasn't as monumentally stupid as it seemed. Sadly, that moment never came.