It all started with The Sixth Sense. Actually, that's not true … he wrote two screenplays before that: Praying with Anger and Wide Awake. Praying with Anger is apparently an artsy, semi-autobiographical movie about a guy an American guy going back to India to discover his roots. Wide Awake, however, looks like a fantastically brilliant piece of crap. It apparently has Denis Leary AND Rosie O'Donnell (that's about a 15 on the Annoying Scale) in some butt-ass comedy about a kid dealing with loss and growing up and blah-blah-blah. Just look at this picture and tell me that this thing doesn't fill you with mirth and dread at the same time:
(Not pictured: Denis Leary smoking while ranting about something stupid.)
But I've digressed here. The first movie that came to anyone's attention by M. Night was The Sixth Sense. Groundbreaking, brilliant, scary and intense ... it was a horror flick, a ghost story, a thriller, and a film noir mystery all rolled into one. And the surprise ending was well done. Really, it was far more shocking and intense than anything Hitchcock ever did, and that's saying something.
Unfortunately, that ending was the start of the breakdown! Most of the reviews - especially the word-of-mouth ones - completely ignored the great filmmaking, acting, and everything else. All anyone wanted to discuss was that surprising twist at the end.
Bruce Willis is bald! (and dead)
Next we get Unbreakable, which I really liked. It wasn't as good as The Sixth Sense, but it was pretty fun … until we get to the ending. In this one:
Bruce Willis is a
security guard!
(and Superman)
Once Bruce finally accepts that he's stronger than a speeding bear (or whatever his catch phrase was supposed to be), he goes out to fight crime. He eventually saves two kids that have been held captive by some whack job. The next morning, he shows his son (the one who's been pushing him to follow his destiny) an article about the incident in the paper, they share a moment, touching scene, great ending!
Except that it's NOT the ending. Willis goes to see Sam Jackson with a bad afro, shakes his hand, finds out that he's the Lex Luthor of the movie. INCREDIBLE SURPRISE ENDING, WHO SAW THIS COMING, etc., etc. The problem is that, unlike Sixth Sense, there were no real clues to let you know this was coming. You can't watch that movie again and figure out what's going to happen – no way!
Moreover, who cares?!?! The cool scene was the father letting his son in on the secret – and the implication that he was going to continue being some sort of Philadelphia version of Batman. If M. Night flips those two scenes, I put that movie high on my list of All Time Favorites. Instead, the contrived, completely forced ending took me out of it. I was left with the nasty aftertaste of bad filmmaker. (FYI, it tastes like a combination of Uwe Boll and the Magnolia version of Paul Thomas Anderson.)
In Signs, the surprise ending isn't even a surprise ending. All of these weird things surrounding Mel Gibson (apparently the Iowa version of Bruce Willis) end up being the only way he can save his son from the world's dumbest aliens? That's not a twist, that's just a series of incredibly odd coincidences ties together. Moreover, don't get me started on the M. Night cameo appearance!! Hitchcock's cameos were cool, but they were also not crucial parts of the story – he was just in the background. By giving himself a long, poorly-acted pivotal part, Shyamalan apparently was trying for an Oscar in Douchebaggery!
I am so intense and brooding!
Apparently he realized he was losing it in 2004, because he put so many LOOK AT THIS, THIS IS IMPORTANT clues in The Village that you see it coming roughly 30 minutes into the thing. He finally stopped trying to do the surprise ending in Lady in the Water, but he manages to make that one annoying by casting himself as some sort of combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Jesus. I like to call the amalgamation Jesus Luther Kennedy, and if I could draw, I'd post a picture of him in action. I like to envision him killing a bear … with PEACE!
Seriously, though - how can I take a movie seriously, especially a bizarre, what-is-going-on movie, when the heroine's chief mission is to show the writer/director how important he is to the world. How big are this guy's balls anyway?
Behold the greatness of my dead-in-the-eyes stare!
So now we have The Happening opening soon, where Marky Mark (apparently the train-riding, Bostonian version of Bruce Willis) has to deal with whatever world-wide catastrophe is taking place. In the end, it'll probably turn out to all be a dream, or it's a hoax on TV, or there's a deadly weapon created by our own government, or everyone on the train is actually dead, or some other ridiculous bologna.
But here's the sad part – I KNOW I'm going to go see it. There's no doubt in my mind. I'll walk in, plunk down my $80 (or whatever it takes to see a movie these days) and watch a film I have every expectation will end up being stupid. And why? Because he made 1.9 great movies, that's why. Really, there are some wonderful parts in all of those flicks, so it's probably more like 2.6 great movies total. A part of me keeps hoping he'll turn it around. I did the same thing with George Lucas. Every time I left one of the "prequel" Star Wars flicks, I was grossly disappointed … and yet I kept going back, hoping Lucas would stop being so insane and stop ruining a great franchise. As much as I bitch about crappy films, I still go see things like this.
So the moral of our story is simple … I am, as always, a dope!
Until next time,
The Jim
P.S. Iron Man rocked! That is all.
2 comments:
We don't go to the movies much, due to the aforementioned cost (although I can't imagine it costing $80 in our lifetimes). But I do love Marky Mark, so I am planning to rent this one. We rent from the vending machine at the grocery store (which is so cool--just $1.00 a day!). I think you way underestimate Signs, while I do agree with your condemnation of the Village. I spent the entire movie hoping against hope they were not in some sort of "self"-imposed anti-progress compound. But, Signs was not really about suspense, though there was a fair amoount of it, it was, for me a sort of refreshing horror movie with heart where you actually saw the boogie man--pieces of him at first: a hand here a shadow there--then him in his entirety as a monster standing in someone's living room. It was, for me a sort of a heart warming, adventure story about a family who sticks together and survives. They did survive, right?
I still haven't gone to see The Happening either. I think I'll wait to rent it. I just have such an anticipation of disappointment, and there’s too many other things I actually want to see.
As far as your analysis of Signs, I don't buy it! If the whole point was suspense, than the appearance of the alien should have been sufficient. Why have all of this foreshadowing about the guy's failed baseball career, or the daughter's weird thing about glasses of water? Why have M. Night drive in and tell us he heard the Boogie Men are afraid of water? That has nothing to do with building suspense; rather, that leads towards this weird series of coincidences that they use to kill the aliens. If it was all about suspense, he could just have the aliens get killed with knives, or a hammer, or just any old thing. (BTW, that's what Hitchcock would have done.) It wouldn't take walking into The Room of Water All Over The Place.
And I know I'm not the first to mention this, but why would you invade a planet where 70% of the surface is the ONE THING that will defeat you? How do you expect to invade a planet when a freaking basement door can keep you at bay? What's the message there? If you wait, weird coincidences will bail you out?
Or is it that you shouldn't worry in a conflict, because your opposition is usually stupid and incompetent? Because if that's the message, that's actually not bad. Otherwise, I still consider Signs highly, highly flawed in execution.
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