Lady in the Water

[yendi]

shadesong and I scored preview passes to Lady in the Water tonight.

This is a mini-review, with no spoilers (so please don't ask for any in comments).

The bad stuff first:

1. The script kind of blows. You can definitely see why Disney passed on it, especially in light of Night's refusal to really defend it (assuming the EW article was on target).

2. Night Mary-Sues himself. He not only has one of the biggest roles in the movie, but there's simply no need for him to be there. I know that Night needs to put himself in all his movies, but he could learn from Hitchcock's "less is more" philosophy. There's a reason people call him "writer-director" M. Night Shyamalan, instead of "writer-director-actor" M. Night Shyamalan.

3. I'm sorry, but calling the mermaid a fucking "Narf," and the evil creatures "Scrunts," was a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. I don't care if those names even exist somewhere in "real" mythology. It's impossible to take names like that seriously. For the record, I wore a Pinky and the Brain T-Shirt in honor of the dumb naming, and had the movie truly blown, I would've shouted "poit" every time someone said, "narf."

The Good stuff:

1. The directing is superb, and does a great job of salvaging a lousy script. The fact that the mediocre screenplay and the great direction come from the same person just makes that all the more interesting. Night also avoids a lot of the "hey, I'm M. Night Shyamalan, look at me!" stuff; no excessive use of red to code for dead people, no use of reflection shots in every fucking scene, etc. We do get a wee bit of ego here and there, but for the most part, the directing is about making this a solid, fast-paced movie.

2. The acting. Paul Giamatti is incapable of giving a bad performance, even in a half-assed sci-fi movie by John Woo. Put him with a good director, and magic happens. But the rest of the cast holds their own. We get great supporting performances from Jeffrey Wright, Mary Beth Hurt, Sarita Choudhury, and, in a scene-stealing performance, Cindy Cheung (haven't heard of her? Neither had I, until today).

3. The comedy. Yes, the comedy. This is as close to an outright comedy as Night has ever come. Although the movie basically defies genres, it's closer to horror-comedy than anything. There are laugh-out-loud moments throughout the film. Deliberate ones (for those skeptical of Night after his last two movies). Even some toying with the fourth wall.

4. I scored a t-shirt from 97.1 (one of the two radio stations sponsoring the screening, although the pass we scored was from shakefire.com) for knowing that Night co-wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little.

Overall, a definite recommendation to see it (although I suspect you won't score a t-shirt), with a warning not to go in expecting The Seventh Sense/Even Less Breakable. Appreciate it as a fun horror comedy popcorn flick, and ignore the name over the titles.

Comments

[jmfunnyface.livejournal.com]

So it is a horror film then? Is it really scary? I'm the world's biggest chicken.

[yendi]

Some horror, but only one jump-scare that I recall. More creepiness and a sense of danger than anything else.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Do you cover your eyes and ears during previews of horror movies when you're at the movies?

I do.

:claims the World's Biggest Chicken award:

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

Can I share that award with you? I can't bear it when I go see something I'm excited about and there's a preview for, oh, say, Saw 2, which I had to see at least twice in front of Serenity and countless other times in front of other movies.

Shudder.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I can't take it. I have a hugely overactive imagination, and anything horrible tends to get wedged into it, sure to come back and haunt me late at night when I'm the only one awake.

I literally stick my fingers in my ears and close my eyes, and tell N to tell me when it's over.

[jmfunnyface.livejournal.com]

*hangs head* I even do that during commercials on tv if I can't find the remote.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Chickens of the world, unite! We should have a support group, or something.

[averyslave.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up. This is about what I've come to expect from him. Incredible direction on some hacked out first draft script. He is a strange duck, that M Night.

[yendi]

I'd really like to see a serious (i.e., not Stuart Little) Night script directed by someone else, just to force him to really, really write. I think it made Tarantino a better director, and it would do the same for him.

[muse0fire.livejournal.com]

wow, that's a far better review than the one on AICN, and you might actually have convinced me to see it.... is it theatre-worthy or netflix-worthy?

[yendi]

It's theatre-worthy, I think.

Oh, and AICN is the site that's the convergence of bad writing, moronic opinions, and poor site design. I'd say take anything they write with a grain of salt, but it's simply better not to waste time on them.

Not that I'm opinionated or anything. :-)

[muse0fire.livejournal.com]

I agree on the bad writing and poor site design :-) Generally I just read them for Herc's co-axial stuff, since I do tend to agree with him on a lot of tv stuff. Usually I skip their movie reviews, but I was dying to see a review somewhere, since I was finding the previews tantalizing - but couldn't reconcile that with it being an M. Night Shamalamadingdong movie.... So, I read it.

Theatre-worthy, eh? That's quite an endorsement these days!

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

The fact that the mediocre screenplay and the great direction come from the same person just makes that all the more interesting.

Hey, if it works for Terry Gilliam....

[yendi]

Of the four great movies he did from 1985-1995, he only wrote 1.5 of them.

[grandmofhelsing.livejournal.com]

Yes, and he had help from Tom Fucking Stoppard on the best of the bunch.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I find it amusing that you and I wrote pretty much the same review, simultaneously, in adjoining rooms.

[yendi]

Amusing, but not surprising. :-)

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

'Night Mary-Sues himself.'

That's what the M. in M. Night Shyamalan stands for.

Also, 'Shyamalan' is Indian for 'Laurell Hamilton.'

[yendi]

Man. His IMDB entry is woefully incomplete.

[scottwrites.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to see what Night says (or doesn't say) about the whole Disney/LITW issue in the book that comes out next week I think. The Man Who Heard Voices. Jeffrey Wells found it interesting, so I figure it's worth a read.

[yendi]

*nod* He did speak a bit for the EW article, but I definitely want more of the story.

[harold3.livejournal.com]

Man, after "The Village" I'm too burned on Shyamaln.

Is it worth going to see in theaters when one is already expecting crap because of the last film? or is this something I should borrow off someone a few months after it comes out.

[grandmofhelsing.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. "The Village" is easily the worst film I saw when I was still writing movie reviews. And I saw "Dungeons & Dragons."

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning about narfs and scrunts. I won't groan as loudly in the theater.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

*SPOILERS OF A SORT, BECAUSE I SAW THE MOVIE TONIGHT TOO*

1. The script kind of blows.

Agreed. Jeez, the third or so time he went back to the Chinese lady for more of this ludicrously overdeveloped bedtime story, I was groaning in pain. You know, I like fairy tales, but 1001 Arabian Nights aside, most of them are pretty straightforward and don't feature a cast of 50 helpers, much less a mythology that makes no freakin' sense.

2. Night Mary-Sues himself.

This really bugged me. Okay, he gets to play the person whose writing is going to usher in a magical new era of peace and wonder. And he's going to be so important that he'll be assassinated. All a bit overdone, perhaps… but wait! There's more! There's a film critic… and he's an overbearing, humorless asshole! And everything he says is wrong and stupid! And his wrong, stupid opinions nearly get everyone killed and extinguish wonder and magic from the world! Geez, I'm just not getting the metaphor here! Maybe it should be just a little more obvious? Please?

3. I'm sorry, but calling the mermaid a fucking "Narf," and the evil creatures "Scrunts," was a bad idea.

Agreed, agreed, agreed. And yeah, I thought of Pinky too.

We didn't score a T-shirt, but we got a transparent blue frisbee. And I did enjoy the movie, and a lot of it left me pretty choked up, but I could just never recommend it to someone, because I would expect them to come after me with a baseball bat, screaming "Narf this!"

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

Somebody referred to this as "M Night Shamalama's "The Whore in the Pool", which made me narf. I mean snarf.