M Night Shyamalaan is an excellent film-maker. OK, the twist in The Village was obvious after minutes, but it was a film that did not deserve some of the lashings it received. But 'Lady In The Water' is a different story. It is a film that fails in everything it's trying to be.
Primarily it's trying to be a family, fantasy adventure movie and I cannot imagine what kind of child (the primary audience for this genre) is not going to be bored out of their mind from the off. The reason it fails is Night and Night alone. Again he has made a slow burning dialogue heavy movie set completely in "reality". Where this film should be bright, lively, fun, exciting, magical it is instead dull (this is the worst work Chris Doyle's done), lifeless, turgid, bland and, dare I say, boring. The world of the movie is inappropriate for the genre it's living in.
The reason that this style doesn't work is that the whole point of the movie is that's it's a fantastical bedtime story, yet it's devoid of anything fantastical. This film should be set in a world like ours, but not ours. Night - not everything in your imagination can happen in Philadelphia! This movie also feels like it's only ever gone thru two drafts. First draft was a straight up bedtime story which Night has read back and realised "man, this doesn't work... at all. It's terrible" so he's written in a whole layer of character (allegedly... horrifically inaccurate caricature's more accurate) and dialogue who are there solely to justify how bad some things are. sadly he doesn't seem to have read draft 2 to realise that the layers justifying how rubbish everything is are even worsely executed meaning the script is two layers of $h1t on top of each other.
And then you have the complete audacity of the man in casting himself as the man who will (essentially) write the second bible. This would be ego gone insane if he was actually any good, but his performance is the one in the movie that really isn't anywhere near what it needs to be. There's a moment when the character finds out what his fate will be, a scene which an actor of quality would have been able to wrench your heart with, but a moment where Night actually looks like he's realised the film he's made could destroy his career (although I hope not)! Man, I could go on and on from the backstory being explained to you chunk at a time for no reason other than to flesh out the idea beyond what it ever deserved in such a way that it feels like Night's rewriting the rules of his own film as he goes because he's never had any solid idea of what the rules are at the start to the film critic who's only film criticism is "it sucked" which instantly destroys the attempt to set him up as an arrogant highbrow critic (he also gets possibly the worst cinematic death ever) to how blatantly obvious the red herrings are.
I genuinely cannot see what anyone can see positively about this movie (as a whole), unless they are so sure Night's a genius they cannot see beyond the name to the film that's actually there.
Primarily it's trying to be a family, fantasy adventure movie and I cannot imagine what kind of child (the primary audience for this genre) is not going to be bored out of their mind from the off. The reason it fails is Night and Night alone. Again he has made a slow burning dialogue heavy movie set completely in "reality". Where this film should be bright, lively, fun, exciting, magical it is instead dull (this is the worst work Chris Doyle's done), lifeless, turgid, bland and, dare I say, boring. The world of the movie is inappropriate for the genre it's living in.
The reason that this style doesn't work is that the whole point of the movie is that's it's a fantastical bedtime story, yet it's devoid of anything fantastical. This film should be set in a world like ours, but not ours. Night - not everything in your imagination can happen in Philadelphia! This movie also feels like it's only ever gone thru two drafts. First draft was a straight up bedtime story which Night has read back and realised "man, this doesn't work... at all. It's terrible" so he's written in a whole layer of character (allegedly... horrifically inaccurate caricature's more accurate) and dialogue who are there solely to justify how bad some things are. sadly he doesn't seem to have read draft 2 to realise that the layers justifying how rubbish everything is are even worsely executed meaning the script is two layers of $h1t on top of each other.
And then you have the complete audacity of the man in casting himself as the man who will (essentially) write the second bible. This would be ego gone insane if he was actually any good, but his performance is the one in the movie that really isn't anywhere near what it needs to be. There's a moment when the character finds out what his fate will be, a scene which an actor of quality would have been able to wrench your heart with, but a moment where Night actually looks like he's realised the film he's made could destroy his career (although I hope not)! Man, I could go on and on from the backstory being explained to you chunk at a time for no reason other than to flesh out the idea beyond what it ever deserved in such a way that it feels like Night's rewriting the rules of his own film as he goes because he's never had any solid idea of what the rules are at the start to the film critic who's only film criticism is "it sucked" which instantly destroys the attempt to set him up as an arrogant highbrow critic (he also gets possibly the worst cinematic death ever) to how blatantly obvious the red herrings are.
I genuinely cannot see what anyone can see positively about this movie (as a whole), unless they are so sure Night's a genius they cannot see beyond the name to the film that's actually there.