Sunday, July 23, 2006

Lady in the Water (*)

With The Sixth Sense, M. Night caught everyone by surprise and delivered one hell of a late summer hat trick. He topped himself with Unbreakable, which remains on of my favorite movies of all time. I found myself defending Signs more often than I'd care to admit against detractors who seemingly hated it. M. Night lost me a bit with The Village, but I still found that to be an interesting misfire. Lady in the Water is just a misfire. M. Night's strongest suit used to be his storytelling, but you wouldn't know that from Lady. This is jumbled, lazy, "first draft" screenwriting that reeks of self-importance and self-congratulation. It's a dumb story filled with dumb characters (Paul Giamatti's performance, aside) and it has no reason being a movie that people pay money to go see. If I must say something good about Lady, I thought James Newton Howard's score was lush and beautiful and really elevated the movie at times. Although I admire anything original coming out of Hollywood, if this is what we're going to get, I say: bring on The Pink Panther 2!

3 Comments:

At 2:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Lady in the Water"...more like "Dead in the Water"...or "Turd in the Toilet" I apologize for being crass, but a juvenile movie deserves a juvenile comment.

I was, however, rooting for Paul Giamati (I like him a lot). How could this film have been made? Were they making it up as they went along? Too much faith in Shayamalan?

 
At 2:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The above comment is Erik's.

 
At 8:41 AM, Blogger Hammer said...

I like Giamatti too. I thought he was really good in it. But the storytelling was just lazy. Exposition after exposition with no real payoff. Rule number 1 in screenwriting: show don't tell. You don't have some half-comedic Korean character tell the audience everything about the plot.

 

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