Lady In The Water

My wife and I just finished watching Lady In The Water, an M. Night Shyamalan movie. This was a film we've wanted to see for some time, ever since we saw the first trailers for it, partly because it looked interesting, and partly because we like Shyamalan's work.

From what I recall, it didn't get great reviews when it was in theaters, and I can understand why. That's not to say it's not a good movie, nor is it to say I didn't like it. On the contrary, it was good and I liked it very much. But I can understand why the average moviegoer today, who's looking for sex and violence, profanity and action, might find it disappointing, perhaps even dull.

Lady In The Water has none of those things. The female lead, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, spends the entire movie wearing only a man's shirt, sometimes less. Yet not once do we see so much as a breast or a butt cheek.

There are a couple of scenes of violence, but again we don't see much. This is not a gorefest by any means.

Profanity? None.

Action? Only during the couple of scenes mentioned above.

It's a lot like another Shyamalan film, The Village, in that it makes you think. In The Village, the question was, what if the world is not as we perceive it? In Lady In The Water it's, what if a bedtime story told to children is real?

When my wife and I saw The Village, there were three teenage girls sitting behind us in the theater, talking throughout the whole movie. They didn't get it. One of them, a poor girl plainly suffering brain damage because her jeans were too tight, half-way through asked if the female lead (also played by Howard) was blind? Duh! When it was over, all three girls loudly proclaimed that it was the stupidest movie they'd ever seen.

I have a feeling those girls would have said the same thing about Lady In The Water.

I'm glad we watched it at home on DVD.