[Movies] Lady in the Water

I'm not a very big fan of the works of M. Night Shyamalan, especially after the head trauma that was The Village. So on this particularly slow Sunday we ended up watching Lady in the Water.

While hardly the most amazing film in the world, it was still pretty fun like some sort of silly children's fairytale turned into a progressive mystery of sorts. I'm not sure how to describe it - which is something that can be said about a lot of Shyamalan's films.

Like all other Shyamalan films, Lady in the Water can get pretty confusing if you're not careful and paying attention all throughout, but at least it's not as challenging as some of his other pieces.

The story revolves around, well, Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a mysterious girl found by the superintendent Cleveland (Paul Giamatti) swimming in the pool of the apartment complex. In her quest to get home, it turns out the various residents of the building may be key figures in playing out an old bedtime story to get the girl home safe.

One thing I did appreciate about this film was how they chose to craft the various characters was pretty interesting and their continuing struggle to unravel the full story and figure out who might fit the roles was pretty witty. It's a much more lighthearted piece compared to some of his other films so it felt more like a comedy than a suspense movie. This lighter approach may or may not sit well with you, depending on what your expectations were when you started watching the movie.

Of course don't confuse for my appreciation for this story-building element with liking the plot as a whole, which remained to be a tad messy and still confusing. Once the elements began to fall in place, the story revealed itself to be rather flimsy and overly dependent on the strength of the characters to move along. In the end, they were all together just because the story said so and it seemed a bit of a stretch for everyone to play along so quickly.

Oh, and Shyamalan appeared in the movie. Who does he think he is, Stephen King?

It's just an okay movie, not something I'd recommend for you to go out of your way to see but neither would I dissuade you from going to see it. It's just like that - rather ho-hum.