Reviewed - Lady in the Water: The new M Night Shyamalan movie has to be seen to believed - not just because its storyline sounds so preposterous in outline, but because the entire project is so wildly misconceived. A folly on the grand scale, Lady in the Water is prime turkey, all the time.
What could be described generously as the movie's themes are summarised in the opening sequence, which takes the form of caveman animation as the narrator (David Ogden Stiers) gravely intones some mumbo-jumbo about a past bond between humankind and "the blue world" (the water) and how greed for land and property changed all that. "But man may have forgotten how to listen," he concludes.
Well, listen to this. The movie switches from animation to live action at the Cove, a suburban Philadelphia apartment block, and introduces one Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), a former doctor traumatised by personal tragedy who is now employed as superintendent and general handyman at the complex.
Waking up in the middle of the night, Cleveland encounters Story (Bryce Dallas Howard, pallid and blankly inexpressive), a "narf" (sea nymph) who has taken up temporary residence in the swimming pool. Story is aptly named, it transpires, as we're told that she comes from an epic bedtime story (as one does), and is being stalked by ferocious creatures intent on preventing her making the journey from our world back to her own. The screenplay actually started out as a bedtime story, improvised by Shyamalan for his two young daughters, and really ought to have being kept in that form.
The set-up initially evokes Splash (directed by Ron Howard, father of Bryce Dallas), the engaging comedy in which Tom Hanks falls for a mermaid played by Daryl Hannah. Shyamalan later borrows extensively from his previous movie, The Village, as we discover that the apartment complex happens to be on the edge of woodland populated by the fierce creatures known as the scrunts.
The Cove is populated by eccentrics. There's Reggie (Freddy Rodriquez), a diminutive weightlifter whose biceps are weirdly contrasting in form because he exercises on just one side of his body. There's crossword addict Mr Dury (Jeffrey Wright), whose random choice of a puzzle from his vast collection will provide remarkable clues later, just as his son will find supernatural inspiration in cereal boxes. There's the recluse with a past (Bill Irwin), a shrill Hispanic family, and by happy coincidence, a Korean immigrant (June Kyokolu), who conveniently knows a version of Story's story in "a tale from the East".
Then there is Vick Ran, a sensitive blocked writer whose genius remains unrecognised, although Story prophesises that he will have a profound effect on future generations. Vick is working on an opus titled The Cookbook, which offers food for thought about "all the leaders and stuff". This overlooked visionary is played by none another than the misunderstood storyteller and auteur, M Night Shyamalan.
Clearly bruised by some negative reviews of The Village, Shyamalan introduces a newcomer to the Cove in the unprepossessing form of a film critic (Bob Balaban), a prissy curmudgeon who, returning home from a press screening, whines that there's no originality left in the world. In case we miss the points made by Shyamalan with sledgehammer subtlety, one tenant actually says of the critic, "What kind of person would be so arrogant as to presume the intention of another human being?"
I should state that my antipathy towards Lady in the Water is entirely unconnected to its caricature of a critic - I've encountered similar killjoys on the film festival circuit. And, having written one of the more favourable reviews of The Village, I was willing to give Shyamalan's new film the benefit of the doubt, hoping that it might transcend its daft premise as it proceeds.
It doesn't, and it sinks deeper into ludicrous self-indulgence on its muddled, convoluted route to what passes for resolution. It is devoid of logic, or a coherent sense of fantasy. It is entirely lacking in dramatic tension, and the only humour is unintentional.
And it is very boring.
