Lady in the Water (Mini Review)

Mini Review: Lady in the Water sees M. Night in his domain, controlling mood and manipulating tension with every wave of his wand, err camera. The thing this film also apparently and sadly shows is that M. Night may have tapped his creative streak. So called professional film critics have suggested he move onto feature films not written or created by him... and until now, I felt they were only trying to coax him into failing just so they could say something negative about a man on a personal streak of success. Sadly I don't agree in the same ways they do but I do believe he needs to take his one man show on the road so to speak. See the thing is not that M. Night has made a bad film, it's that he has created one that collapses on its own weight. When M. Night created this tale for his children as a bedtime story, which he would improvise each telling, he missed important SIGNS, no pun intended. Fueled by what I feel was a personal challenge to himself and to prove to his commericial handlers that he wasn't missing a step or commerically being lost on an already finicky American Audience, he pushed past good judgment into a film idea best left for bedtime and an audience beyond questions of logic. Lady in the Water is a competant film with flare and style that M. Night has proven is all his own. The thing is it lacks and only lacks the strength of its own structure. It is built on rules that it itself breaks, leaving any audience to feel conned by its end. The paradox to this problem that I see is that the con is what an audience came for, no?

Grade: C +