{"id":2483,"date":"2006-08-20T17:07:02","date_gmt":"2006-08-20T21:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=2483"},"modified":"2006-08-20T17:07:02","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T21:07:02","slug":"lady-in-the-water-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/20\/lady-in-the-water-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady in the Water (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ladyinthewater1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not ambitious; I mean he creates films like a child seeking to spin his own stories in his own universe that could form a canon for aspiring filmmakers to launch from, and his vision gets in the way of his film and his fairy tale spins on its own while the film struggles to keep up. I enjoyed most of the fairy tale Shyamalan invents here involving a creature that can camouflage as grass, a mermaid, a giant eagle, and monkeys. If you\u2019re wondering about his famous and infamous surprise ending, there isn\u2019t one. There\u2019s just one plot twist that\u2019s interesting, and that\u2019s all, so I won\u2019t ruin much here. Shyamalan really seems to try for whimsical and on other moments, it works well. What\u2019s ironic about \u201cLady in the Water\u201d is that Shyamalan casts his film about a back story of fairy tales and odd characters, which falls on a setting of weird characters from a man whose one side of his body is muscular, an eccentric Asian mother and daughter, and a man who has a gift for words.<\/p>\n

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In the fold is a great cast including Paul Giamatti who is great as the every man hero who has to take on this task, and Howard has an eerie beauty about her that makes her interesting to look at. Shyamalan\u2019s film really becomes coherent and interesting in the second half as we watch the power of community take hold on this evil force, and it\u2019s intriguing. M. Night Shyamalan is so in love with both his fairy tale and himself that he creates quite possibly one of the most half-hearted yet one of the most self-congratulatory films of his career. He\u2019s anxious to tell us \u201cLook at this story, see how wondrous it is?\u201d and it is indeed in some low key way potentially interesting, but his film isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I was so utterly disappointed with one of my most anticipated movies of the summer, and Shyamalan becomes his own worst enemy. After his scuffle and departure with Disney, Shyamalan\u2019s warts become so apparent, that I hope he has something better up the pipeline. It\u2019s bad enough that \u201cLady in the Water\u201d lacks the same wonder and enthusiasm of other Shyamalan films, but Shyamalan is so obsessed with bringing intrigue and fantasy to the real world, that he doesn\u2019t focus enough on giving strength to his core characters, the ones whom play a significant importance to the rest of the story. And it continues on with slight narration of the legend, so much dull extrapolation into his creatures, and monsters, and narfs, and scrunts, and our hero\u2019s eager journey to discover who can save Story.<\/p>\n

He even goes as far to include himself in a very prominent role as a man who will be an important figure in history, and there\u2019s a character who speaks poetically to others while his son also speaks in a rather proper manner. And Giamatti\u2019s journey to discover who summoned Story is dull and almost endless and you just want him to get to the point. His awe is missing from the setting and he invokes it all in legend. He\u2019s desperate to bring Narnia to the real world, and it fails. And man is Story a one-dimensional character or what? For such a title character that has such importance and stress and is in dire need, she lacks all the mystique and or atmosphere required to keep audiences watching.<\/p>\n

One of the most ridiculous aspects of the film however is Shyamalan\u2019s spoofing of the critic with an arrogant obnoxious critic (Bob Balaban) who thinks he knows all and suffers an ill fate, a joke that is lost here, because Shyamalan so blatantly includes this in-joke that it fails in its delivery. Just like the rest of the film. In spite of the backlash given to Shyamalan, I\u2019m a fan of his and I\u2019ll continue being a fan for a while. But I was not a fan of \u201cLady in the Water\u201d. It\u2019s a flawed and utterly disappointing piece of filmmaking. While the film\u2019s performances are intriguing and the direction tight, Shyamalan\u2019s fairytale ends up being more interesting than the actual film. \u201cLady in the Water\u201d is a misfire, and a sad one to witness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not ambitious; I mean he creates films like a child seeking to spin his own stories in his own universe that could form a canon for aspiring filmmakers to launch from, and his vision gets in the way of his film and his fairy tale spins on its own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302,349,590,618,703,874,1013,1087],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-fantasy","tag-l","tag-m-night-shyamalan","tag-mystery","tag-romance","tag-suspense","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}