Review # 170: Lady in the Water
Good God almighty, this movie was terrible. I’ve come to expect certain things from M. Night Shyamalan; slow-moving action, even slower-revealing revelations and some suprise twist or another. This movie had all of those and, although I was at least entertained by movies like The Sixth Sense and The Village (apparently a LOT of people don’t like that one, either), this one sucked donkey nuts. Here’s why:
>>There is a “bedtime story” that is apparently true and now these people have to deal with it. However, the story-within-a-story dynamic falls drastically short of any sort of success.. Everyone accepts it all as fact WAY too easily.
>>None of these people can act. Seriously. The way they all talk to each other is uncomfortable to watch as you can feel them thinking about how they are going to say their lines. The worst, by far, is Shyamalan himself. It’s just like his painful performance as the guy who killed Mel Gibson’s wife in Signs, but the role is much bigger and so the pain is in a larger dose.
>>Why, oh, why does the girl (who has the horrible name of “Story”) have to sit in the shower through most of the movie? Why can’t she hang out in the pool? She slept a whole night in Paul Giamatti’s apartment without the shower but suddenly will dry up or something?
>>The only thing that got me through this movie was the fact that, for some reason, I find Paul Giamatti to be cute and cuddly. AND he’s wearing a lot of earth-tones in this movie…*sigh*
>>Shyamalan should have either waited until he had enough money to make a movie about the “bedtimestory” itself, or not relied so much on the story to dictate the actions of the characters. They’d pump the chinese granny for more details of the story (BTW, she had and answer for every single question) and do whatever she said. The granny, however, plays no role except the source of this information. The woman’s daughter has no problem translating what she thinks is just a rather involved bedtime story to her building’s super.
>>This movie sucked.