Lady in the Water and other movies.

I went into the movie theater with a completely open mind.  I knew even before the reviews came out that Lady in the Water would receive awful reviews.  I LOVED The Village! But I get why others did not.  From watching the trailers, they made it seem like a scary movie when in actuality, it was quite the love story.  The twists didn’t bother me even though I saw them coming.  Just because I figure it out doesn’t mean the movie sucks.  The clues he left in the movie were pretty obvious.  Well rest assured, Lady in the Water has no twist endings…no surprise endings…nothing that leaves you going "I didn’t see that coming" or even "I saw that coming a mile away."

Night said that the story came from a bed time story he used to tell his children.  And the very core, that is what the story is.  It’s a fairy tale and actually the movie is quite enjoyable just as that.  But as always, since thisi s a M. Night Shyamalan film, there is definitely a deeper meaning to it all.  If you plan on seeing the movie, don’t read on.

The story is about a sea nymp, called a narf from the Blue World whose name is Story.  When the world was first created, humans had close interaction with the creatures from the Blue World.  Those creatures had powers to tell the future and they helped the humans.  But as human being became more greedy and moved away from the waters, their relationship with the creatures from the Blue Worl also diminished until stories about Narfs and the Blue World became just a bed time story that was told.  Even though Narfs no longer have the same relationship with humans, every so often they are sent to the human world to help.  In this case, Story was sent to find a writer who she would inspire.  Seeing her would clear his mind and he would write a book that would infuence a young kid who would then take his writings into practice and eventually become the leader of the country and bring lots of change and good.  Night cast himself in the role of the writer.  A little egotistical?  LOL!  Maybe.  I’ve ready a lot of reviews calling him pretentious.  I find that funny.  I don’t see him at any point saying "I’m better than you" but more, "There are my thoughts, how dare you judge them?"  Paul Giamatti plays the role of a caretaker of a apartment complex in Philadelphia.  He finds the lady and automatically believes her story and tries to help her.  He finds out from a young Korean girl and her mother, the story of Narfs and what must be done to get her safely home.  Once she finds the writer and inspires him, her work is done, but there are evil creatures ou there…wolf like…that are out to kill her.  Cleavland (Paul Giamatti’s character) finds out more and more of the story and it is just like a story…with archetypes…there are people who live in the complex who fit these special archetypes and they have to be involved and help Story get home.  So who does Cleavland go to ask about archetypes and who they might be?  Why of course, the new book and movie critic that just moved into the building.  After all, he reviews stories for a living so who better to know how to find these people?  Cleveland finds them, but they end up not being the right ones and Story gets badly hurt.  When they all realize they aren’t the right ones, they all ask him how he came to that conclusion?  He tells them that he asked the critic for help and they reply "What kind of pretentious person would believe they knew exactly what another human being was trying to accomplish?"  As this is happening (or maybe before or right after), the critic comes face to face with one of those wolf like cratures.  He says that if this were a scary movie, an insignificant side character would now die but in a family movie (a bed time story?), the violence would be avoided and the character would escape just in time.  As he turns to run, the animal attacks and kills!  No wonder the critics all hated it.  This is all just a big FUCK YOU from Night to the critics.  A big old, "Who the hell do you think you are to judge me or think you’ve figured me out."  Critics are so impossible to understand. They scream and shoul that there is nothing new in Hollywood these days, and yet when something comes out that is creative and original, they dismiss it because it’s not what they expected and or they just just plain hate Night for making the types of movies he wants and for not caring what they think.  In the end, they end up figuring out the right people and Story is taken back to her world.

I loved this movie!  As a fairy tale it was good.  It wasn’t really scary and I wish the people who do the trailers for his movies and the marketing would stop promoting them as scary movies.  Maybe if they did, then people wouldn’t go in expecting something, getting something else and then hating it.  I know most people will probably hate this movie.  I just hope that it doesn’t turn M. Night Shyamalan away from his type of movie making.  I think he just needs to get away from all the big named studios and just do these are little independent movies.  That way, the people who really want to see it would see it and the rest who are just looking for the regular every day thrillers wouldn’t even really hear about it.  I’m not surprised that the critics hated it.  Like I said above, besides just being a fairy tale, the story is a big middle finger to the critics.  What impressed me are the few critics who actually did like it, including Good Morning America’s Joel Segal.  I love him.  He’s probably the only critic who’s reviews I do read all the time.  Not necessarily because he’s a great writer or anything, but because I learned many years ago that I agree with him so I know that if he liked a movie, I will most likely like the movie as well.

There were some great previews played before the movie began.  One was for The Fountain starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz!  The trailer looked so interesting.  It’s a story about two lovers through time.  I didn’t quit

e get the gist of it.  But it’s like they live many lives in many different time periods and he searches for something to save her.  It looked really futeristic at parts and looked really cool.  I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that one.

They also showed the trailer for The Pursuit of Happyness.  The trailer totally had me crying.  The story seemed to be about a father with a young son who’s just trying to do his best in the world to get a job and provide for his son, but not doing a good job of it.  I was crying!  Then the next trailer they showed was for World Trade Center.  Oh yeah.  So not ready to see that one.  Again, I started crying.  It’s just hard to watch.  It was hard to watch when they showed the real stuff on TV.  If I NEVER see the Twin Towers crumble again, it will be too soon.  It’s just not something I want to live through again.  It was hard enough watching the trailer…I can’t imagine sitting through the whole movie.  They also showed the trailer for Children of Men.  A movie set in the future when all the women of the world are not able ot have babies any more and the human race is dying out, a woman (Julianne Moore) gets her ex-husband (Clive Owen) to help get a young woman who is somehow pregnant to safety.  The idea of the movie seemed really cool though from the trailer, some parts may be violent since the the whole world seems to be up at arms and warring with each other.  It’s one I want to see…but maybe I’ll wait to rent it.