Dude, like, NO

Okay, so I admit, I had wanted to see "Lady in the Water" when it first came out. I really dug 6th sense, and kinda dug "The Village," and hadn't seen that other one with Mel Gibson, but basically, I consider myself a fan of M. Night. Never got around to SEEING it in the theater, so got it thru Netflix.



May I just say, if there's a God in heaven, M. Night will NEVER be allowed to make another completely loopy, stoned, brainless mess such as this as long as he is allowed the privilege of a film career.

This was the most freaked-out, spacey, Marin county/California encounter-group-semi-kinked-soft-porn-underdeveloped muddle I think I've ever witnessed. Everyone speaks in a whisper, r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y, as if all they do for days on end is lie around puffing one giant bong-o-rama (or they're all missing a major chunk of frontal lobe). I mean, peace out, dude.

And the lead chick ("Opie's" daughter, actually) is beyond ethereal. She sort of stares, and whispers, and lies around either naked, or wet, or wrapped in a terry towel or a guy's dress shirt and has a penchant for taking showers with her clothes on while being stared at by all the neighbors who somehow miraculously all fit into one little apartment bathroom, and is supposedly wise but basically just seems stoned off her ass or severely iron-deficient. In fact, everyone does, and for a giganto apartment complex, the residents sure don't seem to ask many questions of anything that goes on, cause they're all weird, too, and weirdness is okay and most of them seemed to be, like, blocked writers posessing bitter, existential streaks (what's up with THAT??) who sit around and stare into space and utter meaningless, futuristic crap and wonder if "man" is supposed to be happy (I think M. Night has been in way too much gestalt therapy or EST or weekends at Eselen or something).



Now, if you were the caretaker of an apartment building and some nubile, naked, soaking-wet young chick at least half your age suddenly appeared before you, would you be all like, "The fact you're totally starkers is doing nothing for me whatsoever, so let me just help you find your way back to wherever it is you came from, 'cause I'm so down with you saving all of humankind from destruction" or would you be all, "Thank you, JESUS!" and start gettin' jiggy wit it?

Grass-covered werewolves slinking around? No biggie. Naked chick camping out in the shower who calls herself a "Narf" from another world, here on a mission of, I don't know, world peace or something? Right on. Big-assed eagle gonna pick her ass up and carry her off to spread The Word, now that her job is ostensibly done? Awesome. But can she get to her spot before a "Scrunt" (the grassy werewolf thing, and what's up with THAT halfway-indecent made-up mythological word?) scratches her up and ruins her day? Well, who knows.



And M. Night sticks himself in this flick WAY too much. When he first meets this Narf chick, he gets all instantly weirded out cause she's, like, "hot" and I tried to see that, her supposed "luminous otherworldly beauty" which I guess we're supposed to "get" by her staring and smiling slightly but it really mostly just looked like a come-on from a long-haired vegan hippess grooving to the beats at a Phish concert, and Paul Giamatti (so wasted here) asks how the writer (M. Night) is feeling and right away, he cops to feeling "weird" and then P.G. asks if it's like being on pins and needles or something and he says yes, right off the bat. Now, NO ONE is ever this forthcoming, ever, to one another, this instantly casual and candid and self-realized (and the Self-Realization quotient was through the ROOF in this thing, as if all the men dropped a few tabs or smoked some really good sh*t or do regular Shiatsu).

Then there was a scene toward the end where P.G. has a "pivotal" moment of Self-Realization and sits there wailing (well, doing what he could with a lame script) and rocking the fading, now inexplicably blond Narf chick (Scrunt attack) while surrounded by neighbors, and after I got through laughing so hard I nearly careened off the couch, I was like, END already!!!!

And the snarling, grass-covered werewolf/Scrunt (what IS it with him and crappy, grass-covered monsters?) was, well, crappy. Dude, a mad pug is scarier to behold!!!



Just a lame, sleepy, unraveling, laughable, boring, self-conscious script with majorly vacant acting across the board.

I sincerely hope M. Night makes something better next time. He's allowed one utter failure, and this was it.

Dude, no.