Lady in the Water (2006)

I recently watched my fourth M. Night Shyamalan movie, following "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable" and "The Village." The film in question was "Lady in the Water," and it would seem that I have gone to the well once too often, as I did not care for this one nearly as much as those other very fine ones just mentioned. In this 2006 offering, Paul Giamatti stars as a building manager named Cleveland, who finds, in his building's swimming pool, a very odd young woman named Story (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron, who had just starred in "The Village"). As it turns out, Story is a water nymph of sorts, a so-called "narf," who has come to us from her world to give advice to mankind. This advice takes the form of encouraging a budding young author in the building, played by producer/writer/director Shyamalan himself, regarding a book that he is writing that will someday inspire a future U.S. president. Or something like that. Story's mission is made more difficult by the hairy green wolflike creature that has been sent to eat her. Or something like that. Anyway, despite the fact that the film looks great, and despite the typically fine acting by the two leads and the fine supporting work by Bob Balaban and Mary Beth Hurt, this film is something of a mess, mainly because of the preposterous story line that just grows increasingly loopy as things proceed. Fortunately, much of the film is played for winking laffs, but the entire conceit, by the time that things wrap, just feels so slight and inconsequential that I really couldn't buy into it or much care. At one point, one of the kids in the building is reading the future by looking at cereal boxes and one of the other building residents is predicting events by doing his crossword puzzle, all leading to a "WTF?" reaction from the befuddled viewer. It would seem that Shyamalan created this film as a fairy tale of sorts for his kids at home, and I hope that they enjoyed this one more than I did. In all, not a bad picture, per se, but surely a misfire and a weaker effort from this interesting filmmaker. I hope for better things when I watch my next Shyamalan film, "The Visit," in a day or two....

I have always loved this movie---and all M Night movies---because I like that they are suspenseful, but not gory and bloody. Our 2 ten year olds and thirteen year old watched this for family movie night---and they were on the edge of their seats loving it. It made them think and guess at what was happening, without being overly violent. They were really intrigued about the idea of it being a bedtime story and were very interested to find out if it was a real story or not.I feel like all of his movies have such a great message just below the sruface---and this one was about faith, healing, and love. It reminded me of Signs at the end--it has a hopeful feel to it.

"Sham" usually has a truer understanding of characters than shown here. THE VILLAGE, for example, shows many sides of many stories.Here, we get "fake" characters in a story of humans interacting with supernatural creatures.This could have been worse, but it should have been much better.It isn't classified under "comedy", but we get a one dimensional comic aspect here.It's okay that Sham pokes fun at inner city snobs totally outclassed in a real world with real problems. They are all wrapped up in their inner city fantasy that makes them accept the supernatural, but only on their own terms.The characters, on the surface, seem credible. However, we get a "point of view" mob mentality from off stage that makes us know this is on stage.Take some of the more famous "point of view" movies: Breakfast Club, MASH, and Southern Comfort."Breakfast Club" is totally wrapped up in the view point of an obvious narrator who turns the other characters into stereotypes. She makes her hero the tallest and most super human and most self righteous of characters, and herself the plain Jane who gets the hero at the end, meanwhile abasing every other character as caricatures with no dignity.MASH is a story told fairly true to the book, an effort to give credibility to a story by making the setting realistic. However, we're supposed to believe mob mentality is justifiable, and that one weak person bullies dozens of "tougher people". Unfortunately, this only fools the most feeble of minds, and is heralded by real bullies with mob mentality. It not only is stupid, but it is dangerous, because the fact is that those who made it and loved it didn't do so in order to be fair and just, but to give an illusion that they could hand pick one person easy to lynch for a lynch mob to rationalize abusing. And that is exactly what happened during the seventies and later.SOUTHERN COMFORT was a more subtle point of view story. At least the "bullies" weren't a minority of one against many. Here, we got a tainted point of view from the two survivors, but it was very subtle. Had two other characters survived, the story of "point of view" would be totally different.This movie went into MASH territory, as we get a demonetization of one character, a Frank Burns throw away character who couldn't possibly exist, and is defined as such a person only in order to allow real bullies to claim the one they hate deserves to be hated as a bully. The undeniable fact is that in the History of the Universe, no one weak, ineffective person has ever been a bully over dozens of strong, effective people. Can't happen.That's where this story not only becomes "fake", but "sick" and "dangerous" in the divisive way that MASH became so. Oh, it's nice to think the one your clique cheats and destroys is corrupt and arrogant, but the fact is that if we are in a clique that does this, we are just rationalizing demonic behavior identical to the Nazis of Hitler.Too bad, because some of the other characters could have been credible if not for this self righteousness. It is totally out of character for the Sham, and have to wonder if the Sham had issues with an individual just before and during the shooting of the movie.That aside, there was still an arrogance and self righteousness about the script that alienated people, yet at the same time did somewhat seem to say that "yep, a country boy can survive, and these city slickers are feeble", just way too much to not be comical.

I really enjoyed the movie and this movie is not bad at all. No famous actors and a lot of "normal" people. Very good movie in my opinion. Maybe not as good as other films of the same director (The Sixth Sense, village), but it's definitely a good movie that u can benefit from . This is also great movie plurality of meanings with a great cast proves again that Shyamalan, the director even though he is one of the directors at the most professional and interesting work in industry. The story is the imagination of the creator of the film, he decided to tell his children before bedtime and turn it into a film. Very interesting. Worth a watch.