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What makes a bedtime story a good bedtime story? Should it keep listeners awake with thrills and adventure? Or like a lullaby, is it something to lull us to sleep?

Judging from the tale of Lady in the Water, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan prefers bedtime stories about extraordinary creatures, scary monsters, troubled men who need redemption, and contrived plot twists.

And if Shyamalan's goal with this movie was to put viewers to sleep, well, he seems to be succeeding. Most critics—including those in the religious press—are disappointed in the film. Some think that Shyamalan has run out of the great ideas that made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs so compelling. Others continue to praise his direction, but wish he would find a better screenwriter.

Lady in the Water begins with the emergence of an otherworldly woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a peculiar kind of sea nymph called a "narf," who has come from her home in "the Blue World." She is found in a swimming pool at an apartment complex called The Cove, which is managed by a troubled, middle-aged widower named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). Dripping all over his couch, she announces that she has been sent to perform an important role in human history. But her quest is endangered by snarling wolf-monsters called "scrunts" that rise up from the grass to lurk around the property.

It quickly becomes evident that the real story here isn't about the sea nymph at all — it's about this stuttering handyman. Heep's a mess, a deeply wounded man, because, well, he's the central character in an M. Night Shyamalan film, which are always about wounded men who must be dragged kicking and screaming to confront their fears, overcome their deep hurts, and rise up to fulfill their destinies.

But this time, the film gets too tangled up in its own fanciful ideas and loses track of its redemption story, badly fumbling the finale. Preoccupied with riddles, Shyamalan forgets all about storytelling. Just as Story herself spends most of the movie stuck in the apartment, so the film's narrative never gets into action. The truth is that nothing much happens in Lady in the Water. Most of the film consists of people explaining things to each other. Even as Shyamalan celebrates the power of myth, his own myth is so burdened with convoluted fill-in-the-blanks and multiple-choices that it feels more like a crossword than a mystery.

My full review is at Looking Closer.

Todd Hertz (Christianity Today Movies) writes, "Fairy tales work best when—either on screen or page—they suck you into their world and make you a part of the fantasy. … Lady in the Water is … a complex, fantasy-filled bedtime story—but told in a different and ultimately less effective way. It doesn't so much invite you into the world of the story as it displays people hearing about a story."

He adds, "Eventually, it feels like this is the longest bedtime story ever. Kids in the East apparently never get to sleep. There are just so many rules and details. … But there's just no childlike wonder or joy. It lacks the awe and giddiness of seeing life transform, like in Unbreakable. It lacks the heart that made you care when you realized Sixth Sense's secret. It lacks the connection with the characters that made Signs' ending feel so triumphant. And unlike those films, Lady in the Water's final legacy will be as an enjoyable tale that, in the end, is largely unmemorable."

Giving the film a "D," Steven D. Greydanus (Decent Films) is disgruntled by Shyamalan's work. "Lady in the Water wants you to believe that if I don't like this movie, it's because I'm not willing to accept it simply, like a child. That is obviously false. Give me Babe or Bambi, and I'm six years old again. I'm hardly too jaded to accept a nymph in a swimming pool—I think it's a fantastic idea. My problem is that Shyamalan has absolutely no idea what to do with her."

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July (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50