Lady in the Water (2006)
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright
Synopsis:
An apartment superintendent finds a nymph who he must help fulfill her purpose while protecting her from a creature that seeks to kill her.
Impressions:
I remember all the hype that formed around M Night Shyamalan after The Sixth Sense. We'd just found the next big thing. Unbreakable came out and it was good, just didn't have as much impact. Signs and The Village followed, being mixed bags but still decent. Then this movie happened. I heard what a trainwreck it was and didn't bother seeing it for myself until recently. The same hold true for everything Shyamalan put out since (though I've heard he's turning things around at long last). To call this movie "inept" is being generous. I like the basic idea of a fairy tale playing out in real life and while I wasn't a big fan of the stuttering gimmick, I like Paul Giamatti's performance as the lead character. Shyamalan's self-insert is wildly shameless and he falls into the classic trap of trying to get back at critics with a critic character that makes him look childish and petty (and rather silly when it's in a bad movie that really warrants the critical thrashing, even more so when it's worse than the film you're trying to get back at them for savaging in the first place--see Roland Emmerich in the '98 Godzilla travesty). In fact, the execution is so incompetent and so much of it so ridiculous that it becomes funny enough to actually be worth seeing. If I didn't get as many laughs out of it as I did, I'd just tell you to avoid it, but if you want to see an auteur break down with hilarious results, this may be worth seeing.
50/50