Written and Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, & Bob Balaban
Runtime: 110 min.
Rating: PG-13
Trailer

With every M. Night Shyamalan film, the tired cliché of comparing him to the great directors of all time is doled out. Critics and journalists retread the same overused euphemisms: “The New Spielberg” (Newsweek), “The Next Hitchcock”, “The New Lucas”. But for all their coddling and pandering, there are other critics who use a new Shyamalan picture as an excuse to criticize him for his overt sentimentality and his twist-endings. For this review, you can count me in as one the latter. First of all, there is absolutely no comparison between Spielberg and M. Night. By the time Spielberg finished his seventh film, he had already made Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind – all classics of not only their specific genre but of the medium in general. Shyamalan’s greatest success thus far is relegated to his third film, The Sixth Sense. Where Shyamalan’s previous films relied heavily on the audiences’ knowledge of genre conventions – mainly the thriller and horror genres – and a heavy dose of life-affirming sentimentality, with Lady in the Water, his latest supernatural exercise, Shyamalan eschews much of the thriller conceits of his previous films and sticks to sentimental pap. And in going so, he barely straddles the line between the fantastical and the mundane.

Set in a rundown apartment complex called The Cove, this self-proclaimed bedtime story stars Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep, a building superintendent who saves the life of a mysterious young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) from the local swimming pool. After she manages to convince him that she is a magical sea creature living in the blue world underneath the swimming pool and that she is in danger from wolf-like creatures called Scrunts, Cleveland frantically works with the other residents to send her back to her world. Cleveland begins to learn more and more about Story’s past through a series of lifeless scenes involving an Asian family’s re-telling of an ancient fairy tale. These scenes – and there are a lot of them – are simply exposition exercises, serving only to inform the audience of Story’s, um, story. This sets up a finale involving several different characters utilizing their special gifts to help send Story back to the Blue World. This being an M. Night Shyamalan film, everything is done in a tone that is deadly serious, including burdening Cleveland with a tragic past that he undoubtedly must overcome to fulfill his spiritual cleansing.

Throughout Cleveland’s journey of discovery, he encounters several characters living in the apartment building that may hold their own small piece of the puzzle. There’s a young man who inexplicably only lifts weights with the right-side of his body; a young Asian teenager who translates and interprets her mother’s version of the fairy tale; an awkward and socially inept film critic (Bob Balaban) who gets to explain to Cleveland the intricacies of storytelling rules; the crossword geek and his “gifted” son; and most importantly, a writer (played by M. Night himself) who is told that his latest book will change the course of history. The film is filled with people like these; people who only serve the needs of a plot that is bereft of any real tension or dramatic weight. The reason the film doesn’t simply implode upon itself is because of James Newton Howard’s seductive score and Giamatti’s enthralling turn as Cleveland. Giamatti is the unlikeliest leading man: He’s balding, slightly overweight and not attractive by conventional standards – yet the energy and honesty with which he projects himself on screen makes it is hard to remember him as anything other than the stuttering character he plays.

Even with strong acting at the helm, Lady in the Water doesn’t thrill, doesn’t create any measure of sustained suspense, and doesn’t pretend to care about even trying. It is simply a bedtime story, just like its advertising proclaims. That it’s ultimately made for adults is the reason it’s so dull, but I can’t criticize Shyamalan for not telling everyone what they should expect. Unlike his last film, The Village, which basically slapped the audience around for two hours, Lady in the Water is less insulting but just as dull. I believe Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall, when discussing relationships, equated a strong relationship to that of a shark which has to constantly keep moving to survive. Here, the shark is a lovely redhead named Story, who spends most of the film huddled in a corner of the room or under a shower, uttering mysterious clues. The fact that Shymalan’s story, like the titular character, stands around soaking wet, refusing to move as it should, ultimately spells the death knell for this film. As Woody once said, “I think what we’ve got here is a dead shark”.

Richard X
© Cinephile Magazine, 2006