“Lady in the Water”: a hilariously awful example of God complex

After watching “Lady in the Water,” I have come to determine that the “M” in M. Night Shyamalan must certainly stand for “martyr,” if not by birth than certainly by a legal name change.

Although the end credits inform us that Paul Giamatti is the lead actor of this mess, any idiot can tell that director Shyamalan is the most important factor of this film, of filmmaking, fictional storytelling and perhaps society as a whole.

Cleveland Heep (Giamatti, excellent and heartbreaking despite the script), the landlord of a Philadelphia apartment complex, accidentally finds Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a sea-nymph—“narf” by this film’s terminology—residing in the nearby pool. Story has been sent to our world in order to act as a muse for a writer somewhere in the immediate area. Now, before you finished the last sentence, did you guess that this budding young writer is none other than Shyamalan himself? Oh, his character’s name is “Vick,” or some such nonsense, but we know what he’s talking about here. By the way, Story can tell the future, of course, giving us a few more gems: that M. Night will eventually be killed for his beliefs, but in coming years a young boy, enamored with his written works, will grow up to become President, spreading these wonderful beliefs throughout the world. I suppose no one’s told him that “The Sixth Sense” wasn’t all that great in the first place.

A few pidgin-English-speaking Asian women in the complex, whose only purpose in life seems to be to spout out ancient legends of the Orient without question or reason, are willing to explain the rest: before Story can leave on the wings of a “Great Eagle,” she will be hunted by a ruthless, grass-haired wolf named a “scrunt.” Cleveland and his tenants are actually important components to the legend, Story’s protectors from this beast, given names like “The Guardian,” “The Healer,” “The Guild,” “The Seven Sisters,” and other such random assortments of nouns thrown against the wall. It’s up to Cleveland to determine who’s who and what to do before it’s too late to send Story back to her world.

This kind of stuff might sound great in a hippie-dippy five-minute sing-along by Donovan, because that man actually knew his way around legend and myth, how to make it sound believable and intriguing, and furthermore had a sly self-awareness about him. Sadly, Shyamalan is no modern-day troubadour

It’s sad enough that Shyamalan must create characters that love his own work, but woe be unto him who is created to hate it. (Maybe someone did tell him that “The Sixth Sense” isn’t all that great.) Consider the sad case of Mr. Farber (Bob Balaban), the newest tenant in the complex, who “just happens” to be a film and book critic, disinterested in anything but himself. The sins of the critic are great: he fails to recognize that everything doesn’t revolve around him, he misinterprets the identities of the various heroes of the legend, and he hates romantic comedies. For this—spoilers ahead, as if it mattered—he is the only character to die by the scrunt, but not before he is discredited and humiliated. One character asks, “What kind of arrogant person would try to interpret the intentions of another human being?” Ignoring, of course, the fact that the entirety of the film consists of its “good” characters attempting to do just that.

Funny thing, actually, to contemplate the critic’s arrogance as opposed to the film’s touted message: that “everyone has a purpose.” But in the sense that the critic is wrong in everything that he interprets, he is useless, and eventually deserving of death; and in the sense that the people that he believes are important are in fact unimportant, they are equally useless and merely along for the ride. What is Shyamalan trying to say here? I guess if you’re not M. Night Shyamalan, Jesus Christ incarnate, or those that were blessed by him with great purpose, you should at least try to do whatever you can with your pointless little lives.

In reality, however, “Lady in the Water” is a film critic’s dream and nightmare, at once irresistible to write about yet a true tax on the mind; it’s something we want to encourage others to watch for its hilarious badness, yet we don’t want anyone else to suffer through it. While “Miami Vice” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” were horrid, transparent cash-grabs, thank God (not Shyamalan) they were around to trounce this film into the ground—thus greatly limiting the chances that any little boy will watch it, grow up to become President and espouse his beliefs throughout the world. Because that, dear readers, would be the seventh sign. I await my scrunt, Mr. Shyamalan.