i'm going to reverse the trend...

It has been the near universal trend to trash the fuck out of Lady in the Water, but I'll tell you, these people are out of their minds. I'm even going to go out on a limb and argue that critics hate this movie for the opposing reason they loved Sideways. The latter was about a critic, which film critics latched on to and blew their enthusiasm out of proportion for the movie (seriously, very Overrated, yeah with a capital O). On the other hand, M. Night Shyamalan doesn't like film critics, and in case you didn't know that, this movie blantantly tells you so. So yeah, I think they are juvenile enough to be reacting to a difference of opinion rather than the actual technical and artistic merits of the movie. God knows it wouldn't be the first time.

Anyway, at times the message and style were a little too heavy-handed, but I still think it was quite an enjoyable and different [than others] film. It just felt a little clumsy to on one hand do a very typical, hokey film thing (the hokiness of how the message was delivered through an obvious metaphor designed as a children's bedtime story) and on the other hand make fun of conventional film structure and approach. Yes, ordinarily I'd love that sort of thing, but there was something about the delivery that was a little off. But I don't mean to dwell on this, because I really enjoyed the movie. I still prefer The Village (yes, you fucking heard that right--that is one brilliant movie), but damn, you have to appreciate a film that above all else places storytelling as a (the?) valid way to understand the world.