I would second that. Giamatti is good, Ms. Howard is luminous, and the film looks great. In my book, though, LITW is one of those films with a lot of style, but not the corresponding amount of substance.
I’m glad to hear you say that, since that’s the sense I got of it as well: it was a poorly executed attempt at magical realism. Instead of correctly portraying the elements of magical realism, it became a movie about a man who puzzled people (at least those I saw it with, but I’m sure they had to have had company) when he seemed to far too quickly buy into Story’s embodiment of a fairytale character for no apparent reason. The fact that he had to be convinced at all is where it failed; were it truly magical realism the magic simply would be rather than require an explanation.
I hope that this movie’s lack of success is illuminating for Shyamalan. Each of his films has been worse than the last. Maybe with a few holes punched in his inflated sense of self-worth, he go back to writing movies that are decent rather than expecting people to love the ones that follow simply because they’re his.
Still, I guess it wasn’t a complete waste of the dollar I spent renting it. It’s just that it could have been so much better.
Bleaugh. One of the very few movies I ever sent back without finishing. I just couldn’t make it through the muddy, drawn-out mess.
It was a mixed bag for me. I liked Giamatti and Howard a lot, and some of the elements were interesting, as well as some of the apartment dwellers. Too much of it was silly, however. Too bad.
I guess I was better prepared to enjoy the movie because I’ve read Powers and Crowley and Zelazny and other of the better fantasy writers. Granted LitW wasn’t as powerfully handled as their stories, but hell, not much is. The mythology involved was at least fresh and new, not another tired retread of vampires and werewolves and such. And the characters were interesting, if underdeveloped.
I’ll watch it again but it doesn’t strike me as a movie that you need to unravel on the first viewing. Maybe there’s more there than I think there is, maybe there’s less, but at least there’s something, which is more than you can say about your average Tolkein retread.
Yeah, if I’m going to watch a movie with a fantasy setting I like for it to be less silly, and if it is going to be silly I don’t want everyone in the movie to be so damn serious about all the silliness. “Narf?” Could they have come up with a worse name for a creature as graceful as Howard’s character? Yet spoken with a completely straight face by all the characters. And the whole thing with “Heep” (another silly name) mis-identifying the roles of the tenants who are supposed to help Story was a really lame twist (I got the impression that it was supposed to be some kind of big surprise.) None of the characters were well developed, as Evil Captor said, but even if they were, I still wouldn’t have liked the movie.
Shymanamalamamanalamamana,aamamamanamanamanaman is a hack.
I’ve always liked MNS’s movies for the richness of the visuals and ideas but I don’t bother inviting my brain to the show. I just go along with the story. The Village stopped me cold when they sent a blind girl into the woods with nothing more than some directions on how to get out but I still watched it a few times on cable just to make sure I hadn’t missed something (I hadn’t).
For the MNS detractors there are no more movies in production from him in any capacity (from the IMDB).
I actually liked it quite a bit.
It was very silly, but it looked to me that it was supposed to be silly.
I actually laughed out loud during some parts, but wasn’t sure I was supposed to.
I think I am going to watch it again tonight and look at it as a sort of magical, fairytale comedy.
Maybe that will make it more clear what type of movie it is.
My bad, there is some talk of MNS directing the movie version of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”.
Ooops!
Actually, when was the last time anyone did try for a decent vampires or werewolves film. Sure, they drop the odd “CGI substituing for plot” flick on us with a vampire or werewolf or something in place of the Alien (from the Sigourney Weaver flicks). And they keep doing medoicre slasher and "chainsaw massacre: flicks.
But when was the last time anyone did an actualy horror movie? Interview with the Vampire?
I liked it, but it was my least favorite of his films (yep, I’m the one person in America who like The Village.) It sort of reminded me of a Charles DeLint novel, in the way the fantasy was just part of reality in a pretty casual way, without wasting time on heaps of skepticism.
But, and this is just the silliest nit ever picked, the names “narf” and “scrunt” bugged the shit out of me. Not just because they’re stupid sounding, but because they supposedly came from a Chinese fairy tale, and those sounds just aren’t anything like anything I’ve heard out of a Chinese person, nor were they spoken by the actual Chinese woman in her tale! If the daughter was translating, why not “nymph” and “murderous Chia pet?” OK, sorry, “Grass Wolf” or something?
Her hair got lighter as her makeup got paler and whiter. It started out very red and straight, went to lighter red and wavy. I think she was supposed to be “fading away” or something. Not entirely clear. But yes, when she was revived from near (or actual, it was unclear) death, her hair went from red and wavy to blond and straight. Then it got blond and wavy. Most annoying, with no explanation. It was never wet, even when she was in the water or the sprinklers or the shower.
But, for what it is (A Bedtime Story), I liked it. I don’t think it’s going to become the next Little Mermaid like MNS hopes, but I’m not sorry I spent the time watching it.
Here’s my review from when I saw it:
t’s okay. See it if you like stories about stories and have nothing better to do.
If you’ve heard me speak about M Night Shymalan’s previous films, then you know how incredibly harsh a review that is. His other films rank among my favorite movies ever. They’re suspensful, scary, thoughtful, and full of characters that seem like real people in fantastic situations. This one… Is kind of charming if you’re willing to put up with the nonsense. But it lacks the polish and spark his previous works did. This is by far Shymalan’s weakest film, which makes a disturbing trend since I said the same thing about both Signs and later The Vllage.
That’s not to say that it lacked Shymalan’s signatures, though.
Red signifying death? Check.
Water imagery? Oh, big check there, obviously.
Distracting appearance by the director in a secondary role of ego-stroking importance? Check. Although to be fair, his performance was good enough (unlike in Signs and the Village). If you didn’t know who he was, he wouldn’t stand out.
But seriously, the guy needs to break away from his own tropes. They’ve become predictable and trite.
As I mentioned before, one of the things I liked about his previous films is the verisimilitude of the characters and their reactions to the situation. I could believe the Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson were real people, and that they’d act the way they did. Not so here. The characters here are a collection of oddballs that all immediately accept their roles in acting out a bedtime story (no, seriously, it’s always described as a bedtime story, never a myth or a legend, which lends an absurdity to the thing). None of them ever question it, they just accept that the naked girl is a “narf”, and only they can fufill the ordained roles and save her from the “scrunt” (kind of a wolf made out of grass, in an uninspired CGI design).
Other works have approached movies about fiction or about archetypes with much more cleverness. There’s an archness to Shymalan’s writing here that’s slightly annoying. He’s winking to the camera almost constantly. There’s even an unlikeable movie critic that lets Shymalan get some artistic revenge. The problem is that while many works strain the fourth wall or star people who are aware that they are fulfilling roles in some legend or archetype, they usually chose archetypes and stories that resonate through history, art, and the human psyche. Shymalan is just telling a bedtime story. It has no punch.
And that’s it’s real strength, too. The story, while ridiculous, is kind of charming. The oddity of the piece makes it enjoyable and worthwhile. It’s a silly story that a parent would tell to his kids, but with scary CGI monsters and plotting that’s supposed to be suspenseful, but isn’t. It kind of works if you’re willing to hear the exact same story you’d tell a ten-year-old.
As for the acting, Paul Giamatti does what he can with what he’s given, and Byrce Howard is ethereally beautiful.
To sum up again: decent, not great, which is a big disappointment given Shymalan’s previous works.
I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s LITERALLY a bedtime story. This is a story Shyamalan told his kids at bedtime, that grew in scope over subsequent retellings until he decided to film it. So any similarity between this movie and a bedtime story is entirely intentional.
I didn’t read through this whole thread, I just saw the movie last weekend. I like it better than Signs (weakest) and The Village, but nowhere near as strong as The Sixth Sense or my favorite, Unbreakable.
Anyway, I posted to comment on something I see in a lot of threads discussing movies. While your post certainly isn’t the only one to point this out, it was just easiest to pick on
I hate it when people point out CGI flaws, or hate on a movie because it has CGI, as if CGI is any less real than props, or even the convention of the movie itself.
Just to point out even further, watch the DVD extras. There is no CGI in this film (well, not like we think when we see the Star Wars prequels). All the monsters were hand made with a bunch of animatronics placed in it, and a bunch more puppeteers to work them. This was some of the best special effects I have seen.
This movie failed for me because it didn’t show the world from which the Lady comes from. A lot of the story is through exposition, and like the 6th Sense, he only tells us parts of the story to make the story flow, and introduces other parts of the story to explain why things didn’t work out initially. But, I did like the kid reading the cereal boxes. That was pretty cool. But, like I said before, any sense of urgency was made completely by expostion, and not through action or consequence of action or inaction.