Finally, M. Night Shyamalan's newest film has hit the theaters and given me a chance to see yet another one of his great masterpieces put onto film.

Now, I will try and write this review as unbiased as possible, but I can't help the fact that M. Night Shyamalan is my favorite writer/director and is the reason why I picked up a pen and started writing screenplays in the first place, but here we go.

Lady in the Water quite simply is not for everyone.  That's just how it is.  Moviegoers are really starting to become very ignorant in the fact that they cannot accept a film by a filmmaker because it is not exactly like his previous one.  Every since the Sixth Sense, Night has been the "Twist Man" and has been almost been required to have each of his movies end with a "mind-boggling" twist that will have you talking about it for weeks to come.  That is so asinine and unfair, even I personally feel insulted by it.   This film is a fantasy/thriller that may be a little too deep for the average moviegoer to understand.  Paul Giamatti stars as an apartment land lord with a mysterious past, but a big heart.  He is rescued by a mysterious girl named Story who claims she is from the Blue World and must get back, but she is being hunted by a creature called a Scrunt.  Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard go on an adventure that leads to the discouvery of the hidden powers that the tennants in te apartment complex have and how they all need to be utilized to help Story return home.

Everything is fantastically filmed in this movie.  The cinematography is top-notch and the sets are realistcally made.  The acting was very well done and each character had their own traits to deal with.  James Newton Howard's score is again perfectly meshed into the film, giving it a whole new perspective as compared to not having it.    

I already know that people will not like this film.  I have come to terms with that.  But that will not affect my opinion of the film or of Shyamalan for that matter.  This film requires much thought to enjoy and if you don't put the effort forward, you will absoultely hate this movie.  So I urge everyone who goes to see this to enter with and open mind and suspend all beliefs in realism.  Things happen very quickly and not a lot of miscellaneous points are explained.  You have to make up the back stories in your head for it to be clear.

The only real problem I had with this movie was at the end.  It seemed as if Shyamalan forgot to include about five minutes of film.  The ending happens a little too fast and may leave the viewer unsatisfied.  In my theater people threw popcorn at the screen and chanted "Na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye Shyamalan" and left the theater laughing.  But as I said before, this film is not for everyone.

And if you think Shyamalan is done, you are even more ignorant than I thought.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Good review. Most of the reviews have been pretty negative so far, but that wasn't really a surprise. Chances are, I'll probably enjoy it a lot whenever I get around to seeing it.

Breanne, wasn't the Twilight Zone episode that had the ending similar to The Sixth Sense's an adaptation of the famous short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?

I haven't seen this, so I can't pass proper judgement of course.  However, Shyamalan seems to be letting his own hype get to his head.  So far, I have loved every one of his films except for his latest, "The Village."  All though, I did not find it a complete disaster, I still thought it was a bit boring and obvious.  My favorite, however, is another one of his polarizing films, "Signs."  Crazy ending be damned, the moments leading up to the climax were breathtaking.  However, I think that M. Night is just going that little extra mile when it comes to his ego.  I mean he plays a writer who's work changes the world?  Really?  Sure, I can buy that maybe he really thought he was perfect for the role, but I mean come on!  He's just setting himself up to be taken down now.

Interesting. I don't recall ever seeing that episode. I love The Twilight Zone, though. Rod Serling was a brilliant mind.

I will definitely be seeing this some time next week. Shyamalan is great, I liked all his other films, except I never seen unbreakable yet.

The thing I like about Shyamalan is that he makes his films, and makes them how they should be and the way he wants to make them with these extraordinary concepts, and you either take 'em or leave 'em. I also believe that he is the best suspense director since Hitchcock.

Great review Guy Jackson.

Being a huge Night fan myself, I'm greatly looking forward to this movie.  I haven't seen it yet, from work and getting things ready for school to start back, but I will be seeing it after work tonight.  Hopefully I will agree with you and put up another positive review for Lady In The Water.

Peace till then,

T.I.N.

I am a big M. Night fan myself and he's also the reason I got into writing. I am also an adament defender of his previous films and love all of them including wide awake, but this one, I will refuse to defend. It let me down big time, quite frankly it is one of the laziest pieces of screen writing I've ever seen. Sure, it started with a good idea but nothing in the movie can support that idea and to me the movie just ended up as being a big joke. The plot holes are numerous and the execution of most of the plot points were just completely off. I also don't agree that it was deep and requires thought. It's a very cliche idea that everyone has a purpose done in a very poor way. Like I said, I am a huge M. Night fan but this one just dissapointed me so much. Everything about it just seemed wrong from the way certain lines were delivered to the overal story. Below I will list several things that dissapointed me about it and for those that have seen it feel free to respond back.

SPOILERS BELOW (READ IF YOU'VE SEEN IT)
-None of the characters showed any skepticism. Cleaveland didn't even question her name (Story? I hear that name all the time) and believed her simply because she made his stutter go away. M. Night should have had him question her more instead of buying the story right away. Several of the characters get involved too quickly with little resistance.

-The story was mainly told to us which completely bored me. We didn't get to see any of the story unravel it was all told to us by the asian girl. It also annoyed me how she delivered her lines. She told the story so seriously to get the audience involved when a normal person would have just translated what their mother said without all the drama. It was done solely for the purpose of getting the audience involved and didn't stay true to how the characters and real people would act. Secondly, the story was pretetious and downright silly in parts. It just kept getting longer and longer, all narrated to us. There was little action where the audience could see and figure things out for themselves. Everything was spoon fed to the audience.

PLOT HOLES
-Story is only attacked when outside of the water so why not throw her in the pool and have the eagle pick her up from there. It would have made alot more sense but had M. Night followed that simple logic he would have been out of a movie.

-He also states that the guardian is the only one that can watch her get taken away yet at the end everyone watches. Way to set up your own rules and then break them just for the sake of a twist, a rather predicatable one at that.

-As for the guardian, why the hell did he only work out one side of his body? It served no purpose to the story and was just a nice visual look with no substance. I expected more from M. Night but that's all it turned out to be. It was also too obvious that he was the guardian. As soon as they said it wasn't cleaveland it was obvious who it would be. Still, why work out one side of your body? I guess Mr. Shyamalan doesn't have an answer for that either.

-THe kid with the cereal boxes, not only was it cliche to have a kid be able to see things just like all the other horror/thriller movies it was also done poorly in my opinion. Cereal boxes had nothing to do with the rest of the story and it just seemed he pulled that out of his ass, again for the sake of a little twist.

-And the critic, what a terrible decision. It was funny when he said "oh a dog" and was thinking out loud but his whole spiel was too much. It took us out of a dramatic scene and put us into what was supposed to be funny but wasn't. Completely overdone and it ruined what little coherence and flow the movie had going.

NO MORE SPOILERS

I could go on but I won't. I will warn all of you though, even M. Night fans that this movie has it's problems. Most M. Night fans will tell you it's deep and thoughful and that you didn't understand it but that's what you get every film of his. His concepts are not hard to get, they are just done in a way that isn't to everyones taste and those that like it defend it as deep, it happened with unbreakable and it happened with signs. THe face is his movies are slow paced and most people find them boring. I don't and I didn't find this one boring but I did find the story laughable, full of holes and a stretch on M. Night's part. Anyway, basically be warned. If you think about movies alot and notice plot holes right away you won't enjoy this movie.

Saw this and I thought it was great. Kinda went in skeptical, and found the first twenty minutes to be kinda silly and what not, boring and wondering where this was going, and then as it went on I found myself really getting into the story. Shyamalan did such a great job creating these characters and building a story around them, I thought it was quite brilliant how it was done. It entertained me until the end, and kept me wondering and interested in what was going to happen next. In an industry that just spins out the same monotonous crap over and over it's always great when Shyamalan comes out with a movie and it's like a breath of fresh air, and spins our imagination in a whole new direction and reinvents the way we look at movies both the way they are  seen and can be made. This will probably be one of those kinds of movies like the Village, where it's an acquired taste and most will probably bash it's subject matter, but for those of us who actually have vision and an imagination this is a great film for people who are sick of the same Hollywood hogwash.

SPOILERS

Finally purchased Lady In The Water and watched it twice in a couple of days.

I've come to the conclusion that M. Night Shyamalan is one of my favourite, if not, THE favourite director of mine. No matter what reviews his movies get, I just love them.

Lady In The Water is big on theme and small on twists/hooks. This time, Shyamalan touches on the theme of "Purpose." He tells us a story (a fairytale) in a straight forward way. The characters are simple and dialogue is a little on the nose (which is true of fairytales). Many people may think that it's weak writing on behave of Shyamalan - but I believe he did it on purpose because he wants to tell a fairytale in a visceral sense.

I also liked how he broke the norm for structure and conventions and seemingly had an idea of the way he wanted to tell the story from day one (most likely the reason why he walked from Disney).

There are a few questions I had, that some people have already mentioned. I'd like to find out why:

- The kid read cereal boxes. Why cereal?
- Why the guardian worked out one side of his body. It seemed like a setup that wasn't paid off.
- The film critique dangerously walked the line of breaking the 4th wall.

I can overlook Shyamalan's errors in his films because I love the big picture. He truely is a great storyteller.

I can't wait to see what he has in store next.

I've been debating whether or not I should see this movie. I love Shyamalan's work. He gave us thr absolutely pulse-pounding, terrifying The Sixth Sense and then went to Unbreakable, which I also loved. After that he gave us what is, in my little opinion, the best alien invasion movie ever made in Signs.

And he went from that to The Village, which was a horrible, boring, messy, un-scary and predictable piece of crap. I will probably end up seeing this movie eventually but I'm still very skeptical about the whole thing. But then again, we shouldn't judge a movie simply because the director's previous effort was a failure. From what you guys have been saying, it's not as bad as the critics think.


Cheers, Chismeister.

I attended a showing of Lady In The Water with skeptasism becasue of the reviwes it got before hand. When i actually sat down and watched the movie though i was very surprised because Shyamalan has actually made a fairy tale exciting and i hate fairy tails. With Paul Giamatti starring though, it gives the movie something extra. Yes the movie is not for everyone but it is made fantastically and written fantastically and if you are a keen movie goer, you may enjoy this.

Since this thread was resurrected, I'll throw in what I wrote about on my blog.

From the maker of The Sixth Sense, and a slew of other movies that feel more low-budget than big money, M. Night Shyamalan gives us this movie he calls a bedtime story, primarily because it is a story he told to his kids and he actually published as a book with illustrations and such. Anyway, as a movie, this tale gives us a combination of a fantastical world with some cool storytelling elements and some serious contrivances that make you lift an eyebrow and wonder how conceivable some of it really is.

The high points rest in the back story of the tale and the basic elements of the story we are given to deal with. We have the story of these water beings who once communed with man and gave him wisdom and insight into his world. Legend said that man moved away, but recently, the water folk of the blue world are trying to come back into contact with them and give man direction. This is what brings this water lady into contact with the world of this apartment complex, and complex is an apt description. Most everyone you see in this film at one time or another plays some kind of role in the larger fabric of the storyline, and not just another extra.

The main story revolves around the apartment maintenance guy and his relationship with this woman who rescues him from drowning in the swimming pool (which he falls into after he catches her swimming after hours). He learns that she is a narf, or a sea nymph, and that she has to deliver a message and return to her world via The Great Eatlon, a big eagle. Stopping her is a scrunt, which is a creature that blends into the grass, but this scrunt is not supposed to attack per the laws of her world while she awaits the Great Eatlon to pick her up, but he does anyway. Unraveling this mystery takes up the central portion of the film.

The downside to all of this is all the contrivances it took to tell the story. They needed to find some people to help the lady meet the eagle and avoid the scrunt. Well, this means the maintenance guy would have to convince everyone involved that this story is true to the point that they would help. Now, we don't see the convincing, but everyone they want seems to play along. Why? It seems a bit easy not to run into a little conflict there.

The bedtime story element is maintained by (and this runs a bit cliche) the old Chinese mother who doles it out piece by piece to her daughter who gives it to the maintenance guy as the plot requires. Finally, the whole thing is given at one point and the relationship with the daughter is dropped entirely, which is complained about, interestingly. While we need someone to control the legend and give it to us in an interesting and verbal way, it got weird after awhile the different ways that it was be delivered (and he did go for variety here). I finally got to the point that I was tired of seeing the daughter pop with another "my mother told me more of the story...", and just wanted it to all be out and let us move on.

There was one point while watching that I thought something was figured out too easily, and taken a bit too far. This was where the "kii" was located. It was in a secret room underneath the pool. Our maintenance guy swims to the deepest section of the pool, removes a grate, and keeps going down until he finds it (holding his breath forever). I'm thinking, "who the heck would even think of doing this without knowing it's there?" Well, there is a deleted scene that covers this. He still isn't told outright, but it allows him a chance to ask her, and then have it dawn on him without her disagreeing.

A final complaint here is Reggie. We meet Reggie very briefly at one point in the film, and he is one of those myriads we have to try and keep track. Well, pay attention to Reggie because he has a larger role than he is given deveopment for. When that came up, I was thrown off, because his name was called out and I said, "Who?"

So the film is a bit of a mix to me, mostly offering a clever storyline with a wealth of nice characters, but forcing us to accept some things rather easily to make it all work. The central pair is well hashed out, and the supporting circle gets less and less as we move away from the middle, but overall it's not too bad, and if you just accept that everyone believes the legend, it works.

I agree with pretty much all of that, George. The film definitely has its merits (stylistically speaking), but it is severely lacking in conflict.

As you say, everyone agrees to help all too easily. The protagonist barely has to work to achieve his goals.

Also, there is some very lazy storytelling here, the chinese mother being a perfect example. Whenever protag has a problem, she pops up with an answer. No need for the protag to do any work then.

Now, I know that there are many interpretations of this story e.g. the characters all represent aspects of a writers subconscious, but even if that is the case, it is not exploited through creating conflict between the characters. You can dig beneath the surface and find all sorts of hidden meanings and interpretations and I think that's commendable, but the fact is that conflict is drama, and this movie is virtually devoid of it.

So much potential, so little of it fully realized.

I strongly feel that someone needs to give Shamalamadingdong a great script and he'll make another great movie. He is a very talented director, but his recent films have all been lacking in the story department.

Just my 2 cents.

Quoted from MacDuff SPOILERS - The kid read cereal boxes. Why cereal? - Why the guardian worked out one side of his body. It seemed like a setup that wasn't paid off. - The film critique dangerously walked the line of breaking the 4th wall.

If you interpret each character as representing a facet of an artist's (or writer's) mind, and the film as a depiction of an individual's creative process, you might find your answers there.

It's a while since I saw this but maybe:

The kid reading cereal boxes suggests that inspiration can come from anything, even that which appears mundane.

The guardian works out his left arm, an allegory to the left side of the brain? Ties in with the creative process.

The film critic could be the inner critic or external critic. The inner critic has to be killed to allow creativity to thrive.

Food for thought, or maybe I'm way off...

Quoted from Martin The guardian works out his left arm, an allegory to the left side of the brain? Ties in with the creative process.

Except that the right side of the brain controls the creative process. However, iot works out because anatomically, each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body. Hence, the right side of the brain would control the left side of the body which makes you allegory work out fine.

Here's an interesting analysis of the film, probably more interesting than the film itself

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showpost.php?p=9030911&postcount=1

Quoted from Martin It's a while since I saw this but maybe: The kid reading cereal boxes suggests that inspiration can come from anything, even that which appears mundane. The guardian works out his left arm, an allegory to the left side of the brain? Ties in with the creative process. The film critic could be the inner critic or external critic. The inner critic has to be killed to allow creativity to thrive. Food for thought, or maybe I'm way off...

I totally agree with the anaylsis that inspiration can come from something which appears mundane. And I do believe that's what Shyamalan was trying to do here. But I still feel like it's inorganic to the story. Even if there were stories on the back of the cereal boxes that the kid read, that would feel a little more organic.

As for the Guardian. As soon as I realized who the Guardian was, I thought for sure something do to with his strong right arm would come into play. But it never did, therefore it feels like it was never paid off.

Yeah - I like the anaylsis of the critic. Though I still feel he was there for plot convenience and as a vessel for Shyamalan to talk about creativity vs formula.

Stew

Oh God, i hear this is up for a Razzie.

That's a shame. The film really wasn't all that bad. It had some shortcomings, but we're not talking Razzie worthy material here. People are just pissed off M.Night didn't give us another Sixth Sense. If this were anyone else, no one would have noticed.

Exactly. With movies like Little Man up for a razzie, this movie definately does not deserve that. People just expect twists from Night. Just like most people predicted comedy for Jim Carrey.

Amen Jordan. Amen.

Also off topic. Do you yet again "see it all" so to speak in Basic Instinct 2? Like the first one.