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Lady In The Water
- 2006 M Night Shyamalan - Director and Samuel L Mercer - Producer
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  The prologue to LADY IN THE WATER is a voice-over, as an adult would patiently explain to a slow child, with fake 'immature art' dwawings accompanying. In this sense, the film is it's own spoiler; we know up front it will be a kiddy tale with a happy ending. We have just bought ourselves a ticket to watch a bedtime story. And in case we missed the point, at the end, M Night Shyamalan puts up on the screen, "To my daughters. I will tell you this story again, and then you have to go to bed."
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For the sake of truth in advertising, let's just call the film Snow White & The Big Bad Wolf, and be done with it. The story is that there is a water nymph living in a water-filled room just below a condominium swimming pool, which, presumably has been there for centuries (since water people and humans parted ways) - hundreds or thousands of years before the condominium was even built, and she is waiting for some appropriate time to pop out and save mankind, and .... well, there are so many similar absurdities that not only does one have to suspend disbelief, but one must also suspend intelligence.
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But the worst is yet to come - it seems that in successive films, M Night Syamalan has degenerated from accceptable Hitchcock-like walk-ons, to cameos, to giving himself the major part of the young author who writes the book that will change the world. Does the man have no sense of shame? Shyamalan's insufferable, unbridled egocentric hubris is absolutely laughable - if he wants to fantasize, let him do it on his own time. A private word to the director: "Mr Shyamalan, you are not moviestar calibre in any sense of the word - stay out of the way of the cameras." Alas
Shyamalan gets no more chances - since Sixth Sense, he has produced 'B' movies: LADY IN THE WATER needs be his swan song. Please.
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There were two items of humor in LADY IN THE WATER which saved this film from being something found floating in a toilet bowl - firstly the Korean Family, mother and daughter (Cindy Cheung Young....). Second on the list was the Film Critic, which Shyamalan symbolically and literally rips apart in this film. Unfortunately, this is one time where his humorous and entirely transparent pre-emptive strike will not help in the least - the critics will, in turn, have a good laugh, and then with great enthusiasm, rip apart both LADY IN THE WATER and M Night Shyamalan.
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LEAST
Enduring Line or Phrase: "It's OK to be afraid...."
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