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Lady in a Very Bad Movie4

M. Night Shyamalan’s
Lady in the Water

I’m a pretty big fan of M. Night. I loved The Sixth Sense, thought Unbreakable was pretty good until the abrupt ending, considered Signs one of the best movies of the year, despite a somewhat contrived ending, and felt that there was brilliance in The Village if you eliminated a few really bad moments.

So I went into Shyamalan’s newest offering, Lady in the Water hoping that the critics were wrong. One thing to note is I don’t read reviews prior to seeing a movie. I prefer to go into a movie with a blank slate about my opinion, though through just normal discussions I got the general idea about the criticisms of the movie: 1) MNS is egotistical and put himself in the movie and 2) he bashes critics.

There are some spoilers here, as if it really matters:
The movie is about a fairy tale. The ‘lady in the water’ is Bryce Dallas Howard, a nymph sent to the real world from “blue world” to be some sort of muse for a writer. She is a ‘narf’ and there are ’scrunts’ who are sent out to kill narfs, apparently, but only based on certain rules.

There are people in the real world that can help the narf. Why they would help her, and what she needs help with are not really explained. There’s the guardian, the healer, the guild, the interpreter…blah, blah, blah.

The usually reliable Paul Giamatti plays the sad-sack maintenance man, Cleveland Heep, at an apartment complex, The Cove. He finds the narf, Story (yes, that’s her name), in the swimming pool when she rescues him after he falls in investigating the noises she’s making.

The rest of the movie is spent as Giamatti tries to find the answers to which of the apartments tenants fill the specific roles that are available to help the narf return home to the Blue World.

He’s aided in the uncovering of the fairy tale by Young-Soo Choi and her Korean mother (who doesn’t speak English), who tells the original fairy tale in sections and it’s translated to him by Choi.

It turns out that the ‘writer’ that Story must inspire is none other than M. Night Shyamalan, who will change the world with his writing.

Also in the complex is a critic, Harry Farber, who sort of helps Heep figure out what needs to be done, as he guesses, based on what little information Heep gives him, what the intentions of the fairy tale may be in regards to characters invovled. Of course, he proves to be completely wrong, but given that Heep never tells him what’s going on, and blindly listens to him and interprets everything wrong, you can’t blame the critic.

This may be the crux of the problem that critics had with the movie. The critics had their problems with The Village, and MNS interprets everything wrong and makes this mess of movie.

Back to my review, though.

The movie is a mess. There’s a backstory to Heep that should make you care about him, but it’s never even covered in a way that makes it significant to the plot at all.

The movie opens with part of the fairy tale to set up the rest of the movie, and then is conveniently revealed through the interpretation of the fairy tale by the mother and her daughter. This strips any mystery to the movie. It didn’t need a twist or anything, just something to move the plot along besides hearing the story being told through a story in the movie. It would’ve been better to start the whole thing out with “Once upon a time…” and have a narrator tell you what the hell was going on.

Of course, besides Giamatti, who strains for credibility in a horrendous plot, the other key actor is Bryce Dallas Howard. Howard was radiant and excellent in the Village, despite any other problems with that movie. Here, she wavers between some sort of mute, a psychic, and just a generally clueless girl. If we could connect with her at all, feel her fear, or understand more of what she really is supposed to do besides just show up, then it would make Story’s story much more interesting. As it is, yeah, you want her to survive, but not so much as to get emotionally invested.

As for Shyamalan’s much talked about role in this movie, I really didn’t have a problem with him. He did a decent acting job, and his role and his scenes with Howard were decent, though I do see how people might criticize his ego for those scenes.

There are several cringe-worthy moments in the movie. One scene in particular involves the critic facing the evil looking scrunt, and describing what would happen in a typical horror movie. Of course, it doesn’t happen, so the critic looks like an idiot. It was so painfully self-aware that it took you completely out of the movie.

There are more fantasy elements to the plot that just make you roll your eyes, so I won’t bore you with them. In previous movies, Shyamalan at least provided you with some great technical movie-making. This movie just failed on so many levels, though. I didn’t think the direction was all that good, and it definitely didn’t have the same great cinematography or score as The Village. There were plenty of scenes that, if handled by a better director, could’ve been far more effective.

Really, though, this movie goes downhill from the beginning. As much as I wanted to like this movie, the prologue with stick figures talking about the Blue World hurt initially. Then you get Giamatti leading the critic through the apartment complex, introducing us to the characters in the film, all of which were cringe-inducing for their triteness or sillyness. From the start, I didn’t really like the characters, and even with the introduction of Story and the backstory of Heep, you didn’t really feel for the characters and their problems.

Ultimately, Shyamalan creates a movie fairy tale that falls flat. There’s no wonder or magic to it, so you never get past the thought that this can’t be real and how the story makes no sense. The whole movie feels juvenile, like a hack director picked up a really bad story and made a movie. There’s no suspense, no horror, no emotion and no reason to watch this movie.

Two thumbs down

3/10

Posted: Reviews, Drama

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest8

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is the sequel to the surprise hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It is the middle film in a trilogy, and due to this, the film acts as the typical “middle film”, introducing the plot points, yet ending on a cliffhanger, and leaving many unanswered questions to be covered in the third film. As an introduction to the third film, it works well as it generates excitement and leaves you wanting more. However, as a film by itself, it does not work as well because the unanswered questions and cliffhanger frustrate and does not make for a satisfying ending.

The film’s story is sometimes difficult to follow, but it begins with the arrests of Will and Elizabeth by the newly crowned Lord Beckett, on the charge of aiding the escape of a pirate (Jack Sparrow). Will is told to obtain Jack’s compass in the exchange of their freedom. Of course, like in all situations, this is much easier said than done, as Will is led to a cannibal island, where Jack is worshipped as a God. Will and the crew must rescue Jack from an untimely death by roasting before carrying on to bigger (and better) things.

The scenes on the cannibal island are generally unimpressive and a bit overlong. A good ten or fifteen minutes could have been cut without affecting the story. There are a few laughs, but for the most part, the scenes on the island are just a bit of filler.

Once they’ve left the cannibal island, the main story starts. Jack owes a debt to Davy Jones, and if he does not collect one hundred souls, he will be forced to work on his ship for all eternity. Jack is told that Davy Jones locked his own heart in a chest, so if he obtains this heart, he will have control over Davy Jones. Much of the film is centered around finding this heart, as it is the key to Jack’s salvation.

There are many new characters introduced in the film. One is the villain, Davy Jones, played very well by Bill Nighy. While he is not as good as Barbossa in the first film, (not that one would expect him to be, Barbossa is a tough villain to top), he is still creepy, and works well as the villain. He was created using motion capture, very much like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. The CGI looks great, and him and his crew all look fantastic.

Another one of the new characters is Bootstrap Bill, portrayed by Stellan Skarsgard. Skarsgard does a truly wonderful job in this role, he gets the audience to sympathize with Bootstrap, and he really is a likeable character. He was not in the film for a particularly long time, but the scenes he were in were among the best in the film.

The returning characters were good, for the most part. Elizabeth was a bit on the annoying side, and Bloom’s portrayal of Will was still a bit wooden (although a vast improvement from CotBP), but Depp was still magnificent. The crew members, both from the Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl were all great. The inclusion of Pintel and Ragetti as “new” crewmembers of the Black Pearl was really great, as they were the source of much comic relief, as they were in the original.

While it was a bit overlong, and some of the film was a bit of a rehash of the original (mostly the jokes, some of them were a little hit or miss), the film is still great summer entertainment. It is definitely one to see on the big screen, because the special effects would lose something when watched on a television screen. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, Dead Man’s Chest is a lot of fun, and leaves you wanting more.

8/10

Posted: Reviews, Action