Movie Review: Lady in the Water

Lady in the Water

Ever since the brilliant The Sixth Sense came out, I've been an unabashed M. Night Shyamalan fan. Unfortunately for Mr. Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense has proved to be the achievement against which all of his subsequent efforts have been measured. That they've fallen short is less a comment on his abilities than it is some twisted paean to his incredible earlier achievement (though in fairness some were better than others — Unbreakable, in particular, is underrated). Lady in the Water is Shyamalan's latest offering, and once again, critics are being unkind (to put it mildly).

Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) is the caretaker of a middling-sized apartment building in Philadelphia. We meet him as we meet his building's newest tenant, Harry Farber (Bob Balaban). All along the way to Apartment 13B, Cleveland chats with Mr. Farber even as he greets existing tenants — Young-Soon Choi (Cindy Cheung), a young university student; Reggie (Freddy Rodriguez), a bodybuilder on a mission; and Mr. Leeds (Bill Irwin), who seems apart from others but who never-the-less maintains a watch on them.

Farber himself is a book and movie critic who's not impressed with anyone he meets, including Heep. He does, however, find himself just a little intrigued with Mrs. Bell (Mary Beth Hurt), a kindly woman whose empathy often sees her rescuing wounded animals. With Farber's promise to introduce himself to Mrs. Bell, Heep goes on to exterminate bugs and clean around the pool before calling it a night.

Darkness has fallen when Heep hears someone splashing in the pool after hours. He immediately runs out of his small caretaker's cottage to chastise the offender. Though it initially appears that no one is there, he eventually spots the young woman responsible. Heep gets her attention literally by accident, but once he has it, he's not entirely sure what to do with it. The girl tells him her name is Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), and he eventually learns she's a narf from a place she calls "the blue world."

Gradually, Heep learns a little more, and then more than he would like to. Among those things he'd just as soon not know about are the objects of Story's fears, toothy creatures she says are called scrunts. Hiding in the grass, their poisoned claws represent danger to men and narfs alike. The ever present scrunts will do all that they can to stop Story from succeeding in her mission. What makes it even more difficult for her and not incidentally for Heep is the fact she's not all that sure herself what it is she must accomplish or how it is she might manage to do so.

Heep, despite his reluctance and initial disbelief, finds himself wanting to help Story however he can. Knowing he can't manage on his own, Heep finds parts and pieces of what he needs from various tenants in his building. And it's his knowledge of those who live there, combined with his innate empathies, that give him the courage to try to protect Story and to help her find just what it is that she must do.

Paul Giamatti is a terrific actor (I'm one of those who still thinks he was robbed of an Oscar™ for his incredible performance in the superlative Sideways), and he's certainly very good here. Bryce Dallas Howard was herself singled out for a good deal of attention in her debut acting effort (another M. Night Shyamalan film, The Village), and she's also good this movie. In fact, the entire cast is quite good. The setting is interesting too, and the limited special effects are excellent.

M. Night Shyamalan is a very capable director (though a few of the camera angles here appeared forced for effect, others were sheer brilliance), and the edits here were just as nice and tight as they should have been. Shyamalan, however, also wrote the script, and it seems that that's what most critics are finding objectionable.

Some suggest the story isn't believable (Shyamalan has himself called the film a bedtime story, and has said it's based on a fantasy he made up for his own children); others lament that there's no twist or that too many explanations are offered. But it's my own feeling that the story isn't supposed to be real per se, and I don't think a fairy tale necessarily needs an overall twist (especially when the entire plot is filled with small surprises all along the way). And make no mistake: Lady in the Water is a fairy tale. In and of itself, of course it's not believable. Can you think of a fairy tale that is? (Consider sleeping for 100 years, being stalked by a talking wolf, or seeing yourself outfitted for a ball by fairy godmothers...do you really buy into any of it?)

The bottom line here is that Shyamalan doesn't need any defense I might offer his story. All that he needs is an audience that's willing to sit in a darkened theatre and — much as we used to do in our dimly lit childhood bedrooms — suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the tale. To say that I liked Lady in the Water might not be enough to convince you it's worth the price of a ticket. But I happened to see this movie with some friends. All of us have relatively different tastes in what we might consider a really good movie (not surprising from two women, one man, a 15 year-old girl, and an 18 year-old boy). And yet they liked this movie, too.

My own recommendation is that you see Lady in the Water with an open mind and the desire for a dark but redeeming bedtime story. I suspect that, if you do, you won't be any more disappointed than we were.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Lady in the Water is rated PG-13 for "some frightening sequences." It is, without question, too complicated and too intense for little ones. I'd suggest it's suitable for those of age 12 and up (unless they're particularly susceptible to nightmares about monsters or the like). While younger folk won't appreciate some of the more subtle humor (can I just say that it's pretty obvious that M. Night Shyamalan doesn't much like movie critics?), there's much here that they will enjoy. The fact that they'll learn something about human nature while they're at it not only gives Lady in the Water still something more in common with traditional fairy tales but makes it a better film as well.