Shyamalan has said Lady in the Water began as a bedtime story he told his daughters, to whom he has dedicated the film. There are all kinds of bedtime stories, those that lull you to sleep and those that keep you anxiously perched at the edge of the bed. This film, which involves Cleveland's attempt to save a water nymph, or what Shyamalan distractingly calls a narf (Bryce Dallas Howard), has the baggy, meandering structure of a parental yarn invented on the fly. And because Shyamalan works hard to be original, the story zigs and zags into unexpected corners, like the apartment where five of Cleveland's neighbors sit rapping in a cloud of smoke, or under the pool, where a secret world lies in wait.
There are moments of charm in Lady in the Water, along with funny bits, some intentional, others not, and a satisfyingly big “boo!” It's always pleasant to spend time with Giamatti, who does most of the heavy lifting as a battered soul in need of healing, though Cleveland's haunted eyes suggest it isn't emotional succor he's desperately in need of.
Unfortunately, while Howard's character, the regrettably named Story, spends a lot of the film wet, she's one of those juiceless virginal fantasies who inspire pure thoughts, noble deeds and stifled yawns. Disney's Little Mermaid comes off like a tramp by comparison, which suggests that Shyamalan needs to add a fairy-tale revisionist like Angela Carter to his bedtime reading.
That seems unlikely, since he appears insistent on clinging to myths, particularly about innocence and faith that serve the myth of his own genius. In Lady in the Water, an unseen narrator (David Ogden Stiers) explains that while man once listened to “those in the water,” he no longer does, which is why we have gone to hell in a handbasket or words to that effect. Apparently those who live in the water now roam the earth trying to make us listen, though initially it's rather foggy as to what precisely we are supposed to hear — the crash of the waves, the songs of the sirens, the voice of God — until we realize that of course we're meant to cup our ear to an even higher power: Shyamalan.
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