July 2006

The world loves the idea of hating M. Night Shyamalan.  After not being able to cater to the impossibly high expectations of The Village, movie-goers pounced on him, eager to sound sophisticated enough to say that the guy who revolutionized the twist ending was a talentless has-been.  Truth be told, The Village wasn’t great but wasn’t awful either; and anyone who gets the point Lady in the Water will have to jump off the bandwagon.

Lady in the Water
4 Stars

Twist endings, who doesn’t love them?  The only time we like to be deceived is in a movie theater, and hands down nobody does it better today than M. Night Shyamalan.  He so skillfully buries the true endings into the first two acts of his films that it can fully justify the price of admission.  Hell, Signs could have been nothing but Mel Gibson dancing around in a pink fluffy tutu while reciting “The Communist Manifesto” in a Greek accent for the first 100 minutes, and the ending would have still made it a great movie.

But Shyamalan has been the master of the surprise ending for four films now, and it’s become so expected of him that it’s not much of a surprise anymore.  The time came for good ol’ M. to retire the twist ending, to stop making films with more 180s than Tony Hawk gets in a half-pipe.  And he did – Lady in the Water is twistless, but the writer/director/producer/actor/whatever else you can think of proves with the film that he’s no one-trick pony; he can make a good no matter the ending

Paul Giamatti stars as the Super at an apartment complex haunted by smokers, sisters, film critics and a bleached skin Bryce Dallas Howard from some other dimension.  Howard’s character, Story, is from the ‘Blue World’ and has come to Philadelphia to muse a writer.  Everything’s fine, dandy and sort of magical until a wolf tries to eat her.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the story.  No, Shyamalan didn’t waste too much time investing development (and what development he does instill feels somewhat superfluous,) but the point isn’t a thick script—it’s the concept.  Shyamalan didn’t take on this Lady in hopes of giving us characters to fall in love with.  He wasn’t trying to dazzle us with story elements and he wasn’t trying to pull a twist on us in the final five minutes.

No, Shyamalan was going for the exact opposite effect.  Lady is nothing but a simple story, or to use the now defunct subtitle of the movie, it’s “A Bedtime Story.”  It’s a modern day fairy tale, not meant to thrill us but instead to celebrate the simple story. 

He even throws in a film critic some will claim to be Shyamalan’s way of poking back for all of The Village‘s negative reviews, but is really just a device to put it in bold writing for the viewer that this is nothing more than a simple, point A to point B story that has been installed into stories for as long as they’ve existed.  Hell, he goes so far as to name a character ‘Story,’ how much more obvious do you have to get?

It’s a refreshing take after Shyamalan’s previous four films.  Instead of trying to wow us, he uses his ability as an above-the-cut director to tell the same story a grade-schooler could tell.  Shyamalan may be too reserved of a director to truly wow his audience, but he still creates visuals and moods that set the story clear as stone.

He silps a bit in the final minutes by adding a bit too much humor than is appropriate, but the overall tone of the film is a gorgeous one, one that makes this critic anxious to see what different stories he’ll pursue in the future.

Don’t expect Lady in the Water to live up to the Shyamalan pedigree of a thriller that’s been so widely connected to this film in its commercials and posters, but if you go in looking for a nothing but a good movie, you’ll find an elegant summer treat.

Sometimes you go into a film dreading the worst and are pleasantly surprised by the result.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout Ivan Reitman’s new super-hero/comic extravaganza – My Super Ex-Girlfriend.  In a year with V for Vendetta, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Superman Returns who would have thought that this would be the best comic book movie of the year?

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Custom Rating

Ivan Reitman‘s recent directoral record has been rocky – he hasn’t directed a really good film since the year I graduated from high school (1993’s Dave).  But here, despite all reason, he delivers the goods.  He gets the super-hero model right along with understanding how constantly saving people might play on a person’s mind and nerves, creating humorous results.  And it remembers to bring the FUN of super-powers – something Superman Returns sorely lacked through must of it’s two and a half hour running time.

Matt Sanders (Luke Wilson) is your average film nice guy.  He works hard, is compassionate and smart, has a crush on a female co-worker, Hannah (Anna Faris), who is involved with an underwear model.  He also has a lecherous womanizing best friend (Rainn Wilson).  His life is rather ordinary, but all of that changes when he meets Jenny Jones (Uma Thurman).

Jenny seems a little needy and a couple of marbles short of a full bag, but she’s nice and the two get along.  As the relationship deepens Matt finds her odd behavior scary until he learns her secret – Jenny is actually the super-hero G-Girl!  With the truth in the open things get back to normal until Jenny’s neurotic jealousy and her evil arch-nemisis Professor Bedlam (Eddie Izzard) both start disrupting Matt’s world.

When Matt breaks up with Jenny he finds that a scorned super-woman is even worse than the regular kind.  What will Matt do?  Will he make peace with Jenny?  Will he take Bedlam up on his offer to get rid of G-Girl?  Will he ever admit his feelings to Hannah?

The film has a comic undertone that works so well I was grinning from ear-to-ear for most of the film.  It’s cheesy, corny, and fun, but it takes the characters seriously and that makes all the difference.  Thurman is a little whiny in her performance (but nowhere near as bad as the trailers suggest), but with that we get exploration of the reasons behind her behavior and one pretty darned good origin story that Stan Lee himself would be proud of!

Even the small parts have nice comic touches such as Wanda Sykes playing Matt’s boss or Margaret Anne Florence as the recurring role of the sexy barmaid who has caught Vaughn’s eye.  And Anna Faris is just terrific here as she breaks out of those dumb blonde roles she seems forever mired in and and plays a character with some brains and heart.

All that and some super-cool fight sequences on the streets of New York which will make fans of Supeman II giggle with joy.

So far this is easily the best comic book move of the year.  After dealing with the mixture of good and bad in Superman Returns and V for Vendetta (and the utter disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand) it’s nice to simply enjoy a super-hero flick.  What a great surprise to find in the middle of this rather lackluster summer!