My Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Rotten Tomatoes: 24% RottenRoger Ebert: 1.5 stars out of 4
Netflix: 3.3 stars out of 5
IMDb: 6.2 stars out of 10
You can tell by the ratings above that this movie was not well received -- not at all. I don’t understand why. This wasn’t M. Night Shayamalan’s finest film, not by any stretch, but it was an interesting movie. Seems that most everyone holds his movies up to the “Sixth Sense” and I think that is ultimately the problem for the writer-director. Everyone loved his horror flick so much, that they are salivating for more and Shayamalan refuses to deliver a hack job on his previous work. I give him kudos for not falling prey to the idiots who just want another “Sixth Sense 2”. I thought Lady in the Water was an intriguing bedtime story. Not that they were not problems with it. There were.
First of all it was billed as a horror film in the trailers. Big mistake. It makes people expect something other than what it is. I knew that ahead of time, which helped me. I didn’t have any false hopes for the movie. I also think that Shayamalan’s performance was a bit wooden and restricted. I kept recognizing him and it took me out of the film, something you do not ever want to do, especially for this film. It was a stretch to suspend the disbelief at times. I maintained mine, but I can see how failing expectations could combine here to make for a bad movie going experience. There were scenes of comedy, which worked fine for the most part. There was one that stood out as going too far. The movie critic faces off with the scrat and he offers too much in the way of direct dialogue. It’s an attempt to interject some comedy, but it ruins the mood. Too much comedy is bad comedy and Shayamalan has yet to learn how to write good comedy.
Other than that, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the film and how it bordered on the surreal. I choose that word because in the real world, one might argue that people would not act the way the do in this film. They would not so readily believe or be sucked into the situation. Of course if you follow the fairy tale, you discover that is the beauty of the story. People who are meant to be play a part in the story, are inexplicably drawn to the apartment complex and to each other. That is the beginning of the theme of the movie.
My mother taught my Sunday School class when I was a teenager. The overriding message was this: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.” That use of the ordinary to do something extraordinary is what this bedtime story is all about. It is a fairy tale after all and as all good fairy tales require, it is supposed to teach the audience something. If you keep in mind that it is a fairy tale, then you may just get the movie and enjoy it for what it is and what it is supposed to be.
By the way, this story is based on a bedtime story that Shayamalan made up and told his children. He turned the story into a children’s book by the same name. It was after the book publication that he developed the movie, which is significantly different than the book.
First of all it was billed as a horror film in the trailers. Big mistake. It makes people expect something other than what it is. I knew that ahead of time, which helped me. I didn’t have any false hopes for the movie. I also think that Shayamalan’s performance was a bit wooden and restricted. I kept recognizing him and it took me out of the film, something you do not ever want to do, especially for this film. It was a stretch to suspend the disbelief at times. I maintained mine, but I can see how failing expectations could combine here to make for a bad movie going experience. There were scenes of comedy, which worked fine for the most part. There was one that stood out as going too far. The movie critic faces off with the scrat and he offers too much in the way of direct dialogue. It’s an attempt to interject some comedy, but it ruins the mood. Too much comedy is bad comedy and Shayamalan has yet to learn how to write good comedy.
Other than that, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the film and how it bordered on the surreal. I choose that word because in the real world, one might argue that people would not act the way the do in this film. They would not so readily believe or be sucked into the situation. Of course if you follow the fairy tale, you discover that is the beauty of the story. People who are meant to be play a part in the story, are inexplicably drawn to the apartment complex and to each other. That is the beginning of the theme of the movie.
My mother taught my Sunday School class when I was a teenager. The overriding message was this: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.” That use of the ordinary to do something extraordinary is what this bedtime story is all about. It is a fairy tale after all and as all good fairy tales require, it is supposed to teach the audience something. If you keep in mind that it is a fairy tale, then you may just get the movie and enjoy it for what it is and what it is supposed to be.
By the way, this story is based on a bedtime story that Shayamalan made up and told his children. He turned the story into a children’s book by the same name. It was after the book publication that he developed the movie, which is significantly different than the book.
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