Lady in the Water

January 20, 2007

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 110 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Well, I’ll give M. Night one thing. He’s a brave, brave man. After being skewered 6 ways to Sunday for “The Vi..” Um.. the movie-we-do-not-speak-of, he decided that his next project should be a pure fairy tale set in what could be the least magical place on earth: modern day Philadelphia.

Lady in the Water is based on a bedtime story that M. Night wrote for his own kids and he apparently liked it so much, he decided to make it into a movie. Despite my extensive reservations about the wisdom of such a project, I’m happy to report that he has bounced back into my good graces with this funny, creepy, mysterious, funny, allegorical, and funny fairy tale. (Did I mention it was funny?)

The basic story is pretty simple - A young girl (Howard) who lives in “the blue world” (the ocean) has been brought into the realm of man (a run-down apartment complex in Philadelphia) for something very important. While here, she hides herself by creating an aquatic room underneath the complex’s pool. The super (Giamatti) eventually discovers her and it is from here that the tale really starts to unfold and a dangerous creature begins to make its presense known.

Many other tenants are brought into the mix and they all respond as if they know that fate has them in the right place at the right time and that they must do their part to help the girl. Now, it might strike you as odd that every single character in the film fully accepts that this girl is of a supernatural origin with no real evidence of such, but like I said, this is a fairy tale so don’t dwell on this point and you’ll be just fine.

By far the most surprising thing about Lady in the Water is its humor. The nearly two hour runtime is chock full of some gut-busting moments which more than balance out the drama, the tension and the “gotcha” moments usually reserved for true horror flicks.

The cinematography is a bit unsettling in the way it films things at angles that are slightly off kilter and with a borderline wide-angle “fish eye” lens at times, but this really helps establish that the people living in this complex are just a bit different from you and I.

And speaking of these apartment dwellers, M. Night really outdid himself writing the parts for these and the casting for the roles was just outstanding. One I have to specifically mention is Farber (Balaban), a dried up nerd of a movie reviewer. His wry comments about movies in general as well as his unwittingly appropo comments about this evolving fairy tale that he is obliviously a part of are just priceless. And for you f/x lovers, there’s enough special effect scenes to keep you happy as well. There won’t be any academy award nominations for the special effects, but they are more than adequate for the story.

On the downside, the background legend that is the basis for this fairy tale is never fully fleshed out. We get bits and pieces revealed to us during the movie, but we never get all the pieces together. As a result, I predict a lot of moviegoers will leave the theater with not just a feeling of happiness, but also a bit of confusion.

All in all, however, it’s a really grand movie and I’d recommend you see it soon.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 4 Stars, Bob Balaban, Bryce Dallas Howard, DVD, Drama, M. Night Shyamalan, PG-13, Paul Giamatti, SciFi, Thriller