Lady in the Water - Movie Review

lady in the water is directed by M night Shyamalan and this is the last video in my series of M night Shyamalan reviews leading up to the visit which comes out very soon I've had a great time talking about his other films I've never reviewed before like The Sixth Sense unbreakable and The Village and as a warning just like those other reviews is going to contain spoilers you've been warned let's talk about what for most people was that first film or they went what I think the village is an underrated movie it's not a great movie it has some great parts to it but lady in the water was that first movie that I went to and I was like I got actually sure what I feel I had to watch the movie again because I was really excited to see this movie obviously I'm night Shyamalan inspired me a lot when I was a kid and I read the book the man who heard voices and I reread it again before doing this review as well as re watching the film because I wanted to present the most well-rounded review of Lady in the water that I could because I feel this film is an easy target as well as Shyamalan himself it's extremely easy to hate on this movie and Shyamalan because tons of other people did so it makes you feel kind of comfortable like yeah I can hate on leading the water yeah I can hate on Shyamalan because everyone else does but I wanted to take a more objective look at Lady in the water and try to actually examine the good and the bad and see what didn't work and see what surprisingly does work about the movie and talk about all of that the movie opens with a narration that basically explains what this world is this place in which these sea nymphs called Nerf's can inspire people who need inspired to be better people and to better the earth and Bryce Dallas Howard play is one of these creatures her name is story she shows up in the pool of an apartment building that is run by Cleveland Heep played by Paul Giamatti she is there to inspire someone to do some good in the earth and she needs all of these people to come together to somehow make this happen while a giant eagle called the Great Lawn comes down to rescue her and there's these three monkey creatures called the tar tunic who live in the forest and an evil wolf thing called a scrunt that's out there and a lot of that is really dumb opening animation is kind of assuming that we're not going to be able to understand this story unless it's explained to us very carefully that's something that Shyamalan did with the village the twist of the village required a lot of exposition and explaining and he did that almost as if he was afraid that we weren't going to be able to pick up on it and lady in the water had a lot of that there's a lot of scenes in which Paul Giamatti is receiving these very long and drawn-out convoluted stories from tenants who live in this apartment building who telling them the legend of the tar tudyk and the scrunt and all the things that happen with the narf and the madam narf and all the levels of importance of this race and everything and it gets so crazy that you almost have to appreciate it and that leads me to what I dare I say like the most about lady in the water its originality it is an extremely unique movie and I appreciate the fact that Shyamalan dared to make a film this weird when so many people were telling him not to do it so many people are saying this will ruin your career and for a lot of reasons it kind of did I mean this movie really did tank him for a while it was originally a fairy tale that he told his daughters before they went to bed he evolved it into the screenplay and then he went to Disney the people that he had made the last four films with and they told him we don't get it and when I reread that book the man who heard voices it chronicled the conversation that played out Disney wasn't really into this movie they weren't into it at all really they thought it was dumb they didn't understand the mythology and shaman felt betrayed because he was trying to make something original and in some ways he got a little egotistical especially with putting himself in the role of the writer that is meant to be inspired to change the world and that was not a very good idea obviously because he's been berated for that for years since this movie came out and I can completely understand why as a director he'd want to put himself in the movie because he similar to me and my friends growing up made tons of movies with each other and I made a lot of short films with my friends growing up and we always had ourselves in roles and so I can see how naturally you might want to put yourself in a movie that is almost if even just as personal as those short films Shyamalan made as a kid with his friends because this is a story he tells his daughters and it grew into movie so I can understand why he would want to be in it for his daughters to see unfortunately the rest of the world got to see the movie as well it's like for me with my short films I made when I was a kid those films are very personal to me and my friends and we can watch them and understand what we were thinking at the time of making them they're embarrassingly bad but we can at least watch and go like oh man that was good times that was fun oh man what we what we thinking you know and we watched those movies and they make sense to us if we were ever to show other people those movies who aren't in on the joke so to speak they'd all be scratching their heads understandably and that happened a lot with lady in the water there are some good things about this movie though for one James Newton Howard score is one of the best he's ever composed just to track the great eat lawn it's phenomenal check it out on YouTube it's fantastic music and it really elevated this movie far beyond where it was before James Newton Howard provided his score also Paul Giamatti in this movie is flawless you feel so much for this guy he feels so much like the everyday man you just want to walk up to this very broken character who's dealing with severe loss and his family and just give him a hug you just want to wrap your arms around this guy and be like it's gonna be okay man you're gonna be fine and that is terrific acting he is one of the only actors who could make a severe stutter not be horrific aliy annoying in a movie another thing that the book really chronicled very well was Christopher Doyle the cinematographer who provides incredible imagery in this movie but apparently in real life is a little crazy it kind of eccentric and if you watch any interviews with him you can really see it on the DVD special features he just takes like some tape and just wraps it around his head and just sits there and starts talking with this yellow tape around his head I mean that's a true artist that's a that's an artist like when I hear of the phrase artist I think of Christopher Doyle and his imagery in this movie the shots that he was able to create with the lighting and the way things are set up are so unconventional and really beautiful lady in the water is a terrific looking movie there are times where long takes are utilized a little too much but for the most part I think it's a great looking film with great acting from Paul Giamatti let's talk about some of the not-so-great acting I'm not a huge fan of Bryce Dallas Howard performance as she's very quiet she does a lot of whispering and whimpering and it doesn't quite work and you don't really know much about her just whatever you're told you never actually really get into her as a character you never really feel that connected to her you understand that Paul Giamatti character has like this strange connection that he feels his stutter goes away in her presence and he's able to suddenly see the world for what it is and he starts to see things and the other tenants as well as they start to discover that each of them might have a purpose in this story like Jeffrey Wright's character who's like a master at crossword puzzles and suddenly they think maybe he's like a guy who's supposed to interpret things through these crossword puzzles but it's not it's actually his son the kid from my wife and kids with damon wayans he reads cereal boxes and sees messages hmm that's by far the weakest element of lady in the water for me it's the whole mythology of these creatures that live somewhere and you don't ever actually feel like it's a world you just hear people kind of talking about it it would be like if in Star Wars obi-wan was like yes you know there's a galaxy somewhere far far away it exists there are things there you know Luke it looks like yeah I'd love to go there no but ones like you can't look at that actually um you'll never see it I'm just going to tell you about it cryptically and that's it you just hear a lot about the blue world you don't really know anything about it just whatever these characters are spewing out of their mouths and so it never really feels like a place that exists if they had shown more of this mythological world or somehow made it seem more like something that actually was real then it would have been a lot more easy to accept let's talk about one of the things in this movie that people berate a lot and that is the choice to include Bob Balaban as a film critic who is pretty much a miserable human being who hates everyone and thinks he's the best person alive doesn't like movies apparently doesn't right at all and is very violently killed by the wolf creature now when I went to the Comic Con panel for the visit this year M night Shyamalan was there I talked to him he was a really nice guy I told you guys but an audience member asked him about the film critic character in lady in the water and immediately he started talking about the fact that he felt people took it way too seriously now yes obviously it's sort of a tongue-in-cheek like elbowing critics like I got you back people got really pissed off about that like really pissed off like actually mad you're kind of proven siya Milan's point if you're actually getting mad at that I mean you realize that right like if you're a film critic hello I'm one and you're actually mad about his jokes towards film criticism jokes jokes you're proving his point it is obviously a very stereotypical look at a critic because I don't act like that at all I love movies I can't wait for movies but it did provide one of my favorite moments in the movie and one of the funniest moments in the movie and a typical romance with a couple finally tell each other they love one another in the rain why does everyone like to stand around and talk in the rain in movies oh man oh maybe yeah maybe it's a metaphor for a purification starting new no it's not also I like the fact that Paul Giamatti performance and the script has moments in which he just stops and laughs at the stupidity of what's going on he'll be saying things to story and be like and then apparently a guardian comes and he just acknowledges how dumb it is Shyamalan is very aware that this is just ludicrous and unfortunately it's one of the movies weakest elements but he continuously acknowledges it one of the dumbest scenes in the movie is when he goes under water under the pole and finds the place where story's been hiding objects and things and he hold his breath longer than Ethan Hunt did in Mission Impossible rogue nation it's also a very tacked on scene there are a lot of scenes in this movie that feel as if Shyamalan had just done a rewrite or something ever he's like oh I need to make this point clear it's not connecting in my brain so let's have a scene where this happens let's just tack that on and that will explain things right the last 10 minutes of this movie I actually feel are very strong Giamatti realizes he's the healer not who he thought was the healer he thought it was the Guardian but now he's the healer and he can heal store these wounds that she just got from the scrunt creature and then this big epic finale happens with the eat lawn and the tar tunic things and the scrunt and what I can say about it despite the fact that it's just insane and doesn't always work is that it's really cool-looking all of these creatures are very cool-looking I love the way the scrunt looks you can see certain elements in lading the water that would be so great if the script had just been better if there wasn't so much unnecessary exposition and if the story itself had been more interesting and if story herself as a character had been more interesting and if you felt like that world actually existed and it wasn't so bogged down in this strange convoluted and jumbled story but Gaea Mahdi's performance the beautiful score a lot of the acting and the fact that this movie is so blazingly audaciously original I can't say lady in the waters a terrible movie I don't think it's a terrible movie I think it's a very mixed bag of some truly atrocious elements and some really great elements and so I'm going to give lady in the water a C+ those are my full unhinged thoughts on Lady in the water because I hear a lot of people have hated on this movie for years and I understand all of the reasons and I acknowledge a lot of them as being really bad but I don't think it's as bad to say the happening or last airbender or after earth I think there's a lot to love and lady in the water it's just unfortunately kind of surrounded by other things that you can't quite love well guys my review for the visit M night Shyamalan new movie is going to be out very soon I'm really looking forward to bringing that to you guys thank you so much as always for watching through these continual classic reviews I'm having a great time talking about older films with you guys I'm really glad you guys are enjoying it as well because it allows me to build up my catalog of reviews on my channel and do more than just the same old new releases over and over again I also like talking in depth with you guys which is a lot of fun thank you so much once again for watching guys and if you like this you can click right here and get stuck mine eyes

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Views: 491,090

Rating: 4.8641729 out of 5

Keywords: Lady in the Water, Movie Review, Chris Stuckmann, M. Night Shyamalan, Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, Cindy Cheung, Freddy Rodríguez, Bill Irwin, Jared Harris, Film Critic, Scrunt, Wolf, Creature, Great Eatlon, Eagle, Bird, Tartutic, Monkey, Monster, Scene, HD, Full Movie, Clip, Teaser, Trailer, The Man Who Heard Voices, Book, Novel, Reviews

Id: 8M_kU2Z_mZk

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2015