Lady In The Water

[shade]

First off, I know there are tons of people on the "I hate m night shyamalan" bandwagon...and that's cool. I really enjoy his stuff...though I don't see him as being amazing or anything like that.

 

I do however like how he has James Newton Howard do all of his movies soundtracks. The Village is a pretty killer soundtrack imo.

 

As for this movie...I liked it...it was fucking weird, but enjoyable. I wouldn't mind seeing it again. Paul Giamatti is really good.

 

What did you all think? I know it's getting pretty horrid reviews.

Edited August 10, 2006 by shade

[silentshadow]

I enjoyed this movie alot. I thought it was really interesting and it held my attention through out the entire movie. As for all the haters out there, they suck because M. Night fricken rocks!

[darko]

I thought this movie was awful. For the first half hour, I thought "wow, this is a pretty imaginative idea". After that it just got ridiculous. His little attempts to be funny (such as the fetal position Giamatti [sp?] gets into to hear the story) are just really silly and unnecessary. The plot gets laughably complex until I finally felt like I was watching a poorly made video game (ie. "we have to find the gate keeper, now we have to find the guardian, now the healer"; it sounds like a crappy Lord of the Rings game).

 

There was zero character development. You get no sense of any character except Giamatti's, and even then, he makes no sense. Why on earth would a doctor retreat from his position to become a plumber super intendent? How does that even remotely help his painful past? It was just a ridiculous explanation for why this guy is a superintendent and frankly, there is no such thing as a 'tragedy-induced' stutter as far as I've ever heard. he should have simply kept him as this shy, withdrawn character, not some crappy cookie-cutter tragic hero.

 

And moreover, why is M.N.S. obsessed with domestic death? In every movie he does, there's a family member who has been killed that has some profound effect on the protagonist.

 

Anyway, for a long list of reasons, this movie fell really flat. The writing was surprisingly bad, and MNS has a lot of narcissism to cast himself as the "world changing" prophet. Give me a break. And the chick looked like Data from Star Trek.

[Crusader]

It was pretty bad but umm yeah it wasn't super bad. It wasn't what I was expecting this from Shamalamadingdong.

[Ryan44]

his movies are too hyped. they are not very good. they are way to boring. and not scary, or anything, just lame.

[darko]

No one even expects or needs scary from him anymore. He doesnt have to keep pulling these shitty twists (IE the Village) to wow us. He complains how people harped on him for not making Unbreakable scary, but then he comes back to the same formula every time.

[ReaperACI]

He's good some talent but needs to re-direct it and try something ultra-new to go in the right direction or else he'll be like Rick Berman or any other burned out Producer/Director/filmmaker.

 

His other movies like The Village, Signs, and The Sixth Sense all were pretty good...but the problem now is he's done the same general idea over and over and other movies have IMPROVED on it. (What was that horror with the twist at the end where she is possessed by the 100+ year old spirit of a former slave?)

 

I haven't seen this movie yet but plan to, heard some positive reviews.

 

He's got the right idea, just needs to find something unique or new now...

[slegros]

i fully agree with Ryan44 he is extremely overrated and very very boring

[justgeorge30]

Did anyone who saw this movie notice alot of scenes where you can see the boom mikes? My cousin and her mom went and saw it and she was so distracted by the mikes. She kept laughing at the most inapropriate (spelling?) times and was getting weird looks from everyone around her. I've heard that some people have noticed the mikes, and some saw nothing out of the ordinary.

[dancing_invisible]

his movies are too hyped. they are not very good. they are way to boring. and not scary, or anything, just lame.

My thoughts exactly.

 

Besides... How could anyone like a movie done by the same guy who did Unbreakable? Or Signs?? Or The Village???

[darko]

Well, I think Unbreakable deserves more credit than it gets. It was a big risk to make a movie like that, and I think it was wholly original. The ending was a bit of a let down, but everything else was pretty well done.

 

Signs, while not a great movie, was pretty good, despite a few major flaws and paper thin characters.

 

Village, I agree, was total shit.

[Muran]

I completely agree, a lot of the time, his movies are completely overhyped, that there's no way it could possibly live up to those standards. Which is a shame because they're, at best "ok" or "good"-ish, so on their own, no hype, I'm sure people could live with it.

 

That being said, I originally really wanted to watch this movie, I have this bizarre obsession with mermaids, and I had heard this movie features one extensively.

 

But upon hearing all their opinions, on top of the already bad reviews in the media, I think I'll pass.

 

On a completely off topic note, did anyone check out that "Yamji" link, posted on Matt's blog? It's looking pretty damn interesting. For movie-geeks anyway.