Lady In The Water 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Despite the childlike nature of the story, Lady in the Water will prove too confusing for most kids, which is a shame, since they're also the ones most like to greet that giant-eagle business with something other than a derisive laugh. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Just when the story begs for some clean lines and a sense of direction, we get dithering and misdirection and another confused-tenants sequence. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Hollywood cannot pollute the ozone with anything more idiotic, contrived, amateurish or sub-mental than Lady in the Water. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: It's hard to think of a deadlier shotgun marriage than Jacques Tourneur's poetry of absence and Spielbergian uplift, but Shyamalan has patented the combo, adding pretentious camera movements that are peculiarly his own -- even the jokes are pretty solemn. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Murky like the water in the pool, or like Christopher Doyle's cinematography. Read more

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: None of this is fun to report from a critic's perspective. I'm a Shyamalan fan who greatly admires what he's trying to do, but Shyamalan's desperate desire to be the next Steven Spielberg has grown painful to witness. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Lady in the Water isn't just another disappointment. It's a jaw-dropping catastrophe -- a picture so wrong-headedly intoxicated with itself you view it through an embarrassed haze. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: At best, Shyamalan's genius for melding the fantastic with the mundane rivals that of Steven Spielberg or Stephen King, but that gift fails him here. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: As with all of his other films, Lady in the Water offers plenty of grist for after-movie dinner conversations. The film is not without merit, just difficult to figure out. Maybe that's the way Shyamalan wants it. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: It is possible to wrestle yourself from the movie's hokey ambitions. There is a good chunk of Lady in the Water that is simply too well made and affectingly acted to dismiss as a mere exercise in arrogance. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: The tension between his eagerness to please and his resolve to make the film inside his head have resulted, with Lady in the Water, in a major misfire. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: In the end, Shyamalan's stumbling Lady never gives us a reason to believe. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: I suspect audiences will see Shyamalan's portentous doodle for what it is -- the height of arrogance and a bad night out at the movies. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: M. Night Shyamalan doesn't have an ego problem. He's just a humble screenwriter and director who makes himself a star of his own movie -- as a character who is a writer, whose words will save the world from despair and destruction. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: These days, movie fans have grown accustomed to being force-fed a film's reality, to having it hammered home from first loud frame to last. Lady in the Water offers more subtle submersion, a baptism of soulful quirks and daringly sweet imagination. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Shyamalan's most alienating and self-absorbed project to date. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Lady is not likely to convert critics who believe Shyamalan is only a one-trick pony. Those willing to risk a dip in this pool, on the other hand, may be refreshed, if not reborn. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: For weeks the Web has been rich with rumors that Lady in the Water is a dog. The noble truth is that M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller isn't half bad. The awful truth is that it's not really half good, either. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Lady in the Water is unmistakably a setback, as well as a warning to potential detractors. You are, it seems, either with M. Night Shyamalan or against him, and this time I must take up residence in the latter camp. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Unless he retains the poise and cool that made Sixth Sense stand out so conspicuously amid his body of work, we're not going to care about anything in his head. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Like Splash reworked by a grandiose Sunday-school teacher. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: Viewers may see religious implications in the movie, with its messianic mermaid and chlorinated holy water, but it really isn't worthy of such deep analysis. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: The story is so convoluted and ultimately preposterous that you're almost embarrassed by the earnestness of the actors trying to carry it off. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Lady is the height of folly, an endeavor as wrongheaded as The Postman, as foolish as any 'vanity' project of the past 20 years. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: For the most part, however, Lady in the Water comes across as a movie that's too bad to be good, and not bad enough to be so bad that it's good. Read more

Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: [Perhaps it's] improvised and protracted, nonsensically and unnecessarily, just for the sake of stringing us along. And, maybe, putting us to sleep. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Lady in the Water challenges us to believe in the power of myth. But the big challenge here is surviving the tedium of Shyamalan's meandering inventiveness. What's supposed to be fanciful storytelling is really just audience punishment. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: With his work beginning to seem as insular as the communities he's imagining, Shyamalan really needs to try directing someone else's screenplay. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Lady in the Water marks M. Night Shyamalan's official leap off the deep end. Not everyone agrees on Shyamalan's talent as a filmmaker, but few, up till now, have questioned his sanity. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Crazy as this might sound, it turns out that self-indulgent ramblings designed to put your children to sleep are pretty much the opposite of art. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Not to put too fine a point on it, this is one nutty movie. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: What was [Shyamalan] thinking? This isn't just duff, it's career-threatening catastrophic. Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: Though the result is too idiosyncratic to be regarded as just one more summer-movie whiff, those who see it may feel a need to act like a pool lifeguard and blow the whistle on Shyamalan. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: Shyamalan has followed The Village with another disappointment -- a ponderous, self-indulgent bedtime tale. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Shyamalan is mystically assuming that any idea or image that pops into his skull will make a shapely tale, no matter how much cock-and-bull logic he has to invent to Gorilla Glue it together. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: If the ultimate goal is entertainment, then Lady in the Water enthusiastically rises to the task. Read more