PLOT: The latest fantasy-thriller from M. Night Shyamalan stars Paul Giamatti as a Philadelphia apartment superintendent who finds a water nymph living in the complex's pool. Bryce Dallas Howard (The Village) plays the otherwordly creature.
Turns out those Disney executives who refused to make M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, Lady In The Water, knew exactly what they were doing.
The screenwriter-director, whose previous four Disney movies had grossed $2 billion, has delivered the biggest stinker of his career with this unintentionally laughable fantasy-thriller about a water nymph living in the pool of an apartment complex.
Shyamalan unwisely decided to turn a bedtime story for his two young daughters into a feature film with a completely unbelievable, convoluted plot, ludicrous, contrived characters and an overbearing sense of self-importance.
Worse yet, Shyamalan doesn't even deliver his trademark surprise twist at the end, which would have at least salvaged some of the mindboggling credibility-stretching that's going on here.
At times, viewers needed a flow chart.
Shyamalan also decided to take on his biggest role in one of his films yet, as the apartment's struggling writer, which may be a large part of the problem.
He may have been too concerned with his own performance to realize that no one was going to give a toss about any of the badly-realized apartment dwellers and their banding together to save the water nymph from a hyena-like monster.
Not even the movie's uniformly strong cast can save the film from its weak, waterlogged premise.
Paul Giamatti is the stuttering, spirit-broken apartment super while Bryce Dallas Howard, who played the brave, blind girl in Shyamalan's last film, The Village, is the translucent, child-like water creature.
The rest of the apartment complex's characters are Cindy Cheung as a funny Korean college student living with her mother, Bob Balaban as a cranky film-book critic, Jeffrey Wright as a crossword puzzle addict with an intuitive young son, Jared Harris as the leader of a gang of chain-smoking philosophers, Sarita Choudhury as the Shyamalan character's devoted sister, Mary Beth Hurt as the elderly animal-lover, and Bill Irwin as a shut-in.
Oh, to see this cast again in another movie!
How about a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, which Shyamalan was apparently inspired by in creating the apartment complex called The Cove.
The film's two strengths are that it looks good, with plenty of lush greens and aquamarine blues. The monsters themselves -- including three monkey-like creatures -- are truly menacing.
Shyamalan's struggle to get Lady In The Water made has already resulted in a behind-the-scenes book called, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career On A Fairy Tale.
I don't know that he risked his career, but he's certainly sustained some major water damage.
BOTTOM LINE: M. Night Shyamalan's latest fantasy-thriller is dead in the water because of an unbelievable, convoluted story, a wasted strong cast, and worst of all, no surprise twist ending.
(This film is rated PG)
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