Yes, the Blue World. Where the narfs live.
For me, vocabulary was the film’s most glaring flaw. I appreciated the ability of most of the actors to utter words like “narf” and “scrunt” as if they weren’t saying silly things that remain just as silly the 50th time you hear them.
Looking critically at the film, I can recognize other flaws too. Maybe it is pretentious for Shyamalan to play the writer who will change the world with his incredible, challenging ideas. Yes, it’s a giant stretch to blame the “book and film critic” when apartment manager Cleveland Heep chooses the wrong people as the Guardian, Symbolist, and Guild (when all the critic did was describe each person's roles and activities accurately). Yes, Jeffrey Wright’s lines were stilted by wooden phrasing that seemed unnatural, even for a person who “adores” words.
Still, here I am feeling defensively fond of the film. I have yet to watch a Shyamalan movie I didn’t like – I even enjoyed The Village enough to watch in twice in theaters. A lot of people don’t consider him skillful at handling his subject matter’s deeper themes, which is indeed a legitimate concern when you have a writer-director who wants his films to say or mean something. If you go into a story with the intent of providing illumination of some kind, of plumbing the depths of spiritual interest, of observing and commenting on the experience of humanity, then it’s pretty easy to get too heavy-handed, to fumble the story/characters/plot, to get self-serious and self-congratulatory, and defensive.
But none of this is so prevalent in Lady in the Water that I feel compelled to pan it. It isn't ruined by apparent hostility toward its film critic character, who dies a violent (off-camera) death. I don't find the film, or Shyamalan's other movies, preachy or distractingly pretentious. I appreciate his interest in the spiritual and personal human experience of his characters. Lady in the Water's faults become more and more glaring if I stare at them long enough, but then I remember its strengths, and my impression as I watched it, and I remember that I like it.
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