Drowning the Lady in the Water

What happens when a scrunt tries to attack a Narf? It gets attacked by

a tzurdchyx of course! What's a scrunt? A vicious wolf-like creature

with hair made of slimy grass whose only purpose is to attack the Narfs, silly.

What's a tzurdchyx? You don't know? A vicious monkey like creature, with hair

made of slimy grass whose only purpose is to attack a scrunt, should it try to

attack a Narf, on one very special night.

What special night you ask? Good lord! Are you really that daft? Well, if I must.

You see, once a Narf finds a human receiver called "the vessel", it can return home,

carried off by a giant eagle. If a scrunt messes with a Narf on a night like that...well,

it's real bad news for the scrunt, once the tzurdchyx's get hold of it. Very bad new

indeed.

If you're still confused, you won't find any of the answers in M. Night Shymalan's, latest,

"The Lady in the Water". If anything, if you've been a fan of Mr Shymalan's

talent at slight of hand plot twists, and suspected that a downward spiral was

immanent after the abysmal "The Village", your suspicions will be confirmed,

and you will probably a little saddened if you saw the promise in Mr Shymalan's

first three interesting films.

As I promised in an earlier blog, I abandoned full length movie reviews,

for these little, mini-cinnamon bun reviews, so what you've read already

is 3/4 of the review.

The film opens with a narrator thrusting an improbable fairy tale upon

us, illustrated with animations of what appear to be Kokopelli figures,

telling us of time when "those of the sea, and those and land lived together".

Until, of course, those on land started ignoring those from the sea.

The sea dwellers, (or Narfs), packed up and left, and the land dwellers

stayed back to make war and live in misery because they stopped

listening to the Narfs. (if you can stand to pay attention, you'll probably

understand why they stopped listening. Narf's don't say very much, and

when they do, they rarely make sense.)

...but...the narrator tells us that a special Narf will return to and make contact

with a "Vessell", a special land-lubber who will change the world and make

it a hands across America, place to live. Aside from a few moments, when

the film's protagonist, the formidable Paul Giamatti, has his diary pilfered

through by the nosy little Narf, there is little in the way of character development.

The actors seem to just drop out of the sky and we are simply asked to

accept their quirkiness for no other reason then that this is a fairy tale, and

it's just not that important.

Mr Shymalan seems to want to tell us as much in the form of an allegorical film critic

staying at the hotel who seems to wink and nudge at us, on behalf of

Mr. Shymalan, as if to say "hey, I know this is bad, just roll with it".

This film is silly, sloppy, and poorly plotted. If that weren't enough, Mr. Shymalan,

who, like Stephen King, likes to make neat little cameos in his films, decides

to cast himself in the role of the vessel. A writer who will sacrifice himself

publishing a great work of literature that no one will understand until years later.

Because....you see...no one gets it...you see...it's just to deep...get it?

This film is deep all right. Deep as the pit of an outhouse, and after watching

it, you'll find similar contents the bottom.

Cordially

Joe