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January 26, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Hollywood hotshots: Leave viewers’ heads in the clouds

Hollywood hotshots: Leave viewers’ heads in the clouds

By Matthew McKee | Thresher Editorial Staff

After recent experiences, I think that fate leads me to terrible entertainment. By coincidence, I fell in the wake of two terrible movies in the last few weeks. The mother of a friend I visited over the winter holidays happened to have Lady in the Water playing as I walked in their house. Later, a mistake in planning forced my little sister and me watch the most kid-friendly movie in theaters, Happily N’Ever After.

After seeing these two movies, I definitely am not happy. Director M. Night Shyamalan hit his artistic nadir with the incomprehensible plot of Lady in the Water, making me wince for seasoned actor Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Saving Private Ryan), who plays the lead in the movie. In Happily N’Ever After, the now trite animation and familiar tropes made the movie another bargain-bin flick for the kids. Not even its attempts at cultured entertainment, such as an evil stepmother howling “Now is the winter of our content!” work well.

Sadly, scornful reviews and my own thoughts — both consumed without cost — always entertain me more than the movies themselves.

Upon reflection, I realized that the two seemingly dissimilar movies both used similar storytelling devices to try to elevate themselves. They told their stories self-consciously, actively applying skepticism to make their narratives seem more legitimate.

In Happily N’Ever After, voiceovers done by the hero (Scooby-Doo’s Freddy Prinze, Jr.) explain that the story, although set in the world of fairy tales, does not fit the normal stereotypes of a fairy tale. Characters in the movie, evil and good alike, also talk about the way things are normally done, battling with the cliches of old stories by trying to create a new one.

“This isn’t your normal Cinderella story,” the hero explains right after he has finished his own rags-to-love story, as if his voiceover knows more than we do. Did the writers think they had to court audience skepticism to vindicate their poorly worked fantasy?

Lady in the Water tries to work us over more subtly by using an in-plot voice to work in plot self-consciousness. A bookworm-type character explains the norms used in narratives to identify characters so that he and the hero can solve the cryptic directions of the strange lady from the pool. Later, the bookworm’s misguided suggestions are found to be incorrect. In one of Shyamalan’s stabs at humor, the self-appointed authority on movie rules — Jamie Kennedy’s character in the Scream franchise — is killed as he pontificates on the very reasons why he should not be killed. Shyamalan seems to want to isolate his own story as original through contrast with other plots that the character spouts off, laughing at other writers and himself while trying to will the audience to accept his ridiculous movie. All he accomplishes is a complement to audience skepticism, and he gives more reasons to scoff at his whimsy by inserting a useless movie buff character in the already useless story. Perhaps the artistic concept behind Lady in the Water — immersing oneself in a fantasy with childlike innocence — is sound, but the execution fails.

The two films do not trust audiences to immerse themselves. Movies should present adroitly-woven tales without reservation and allow us to accept them with childlike wonder. We should be able to drop our sense of reality and let art carry us away with little reference to our normal lives, just like we did when we first heard the fairy tales Happily N’Ever After ridicules. If Shyamalan was criticizing the hard time we have dropping our normal world for fantasy, he makes a great point.

Are directors and writers becoming so worried about their own creations that they cater to audience skepticism to make the stories seem smarter? Have we become so fed up with cheap thrills and common tropes that we expect more movies to address their own improbability?

I certainly hope in-plot skepticism does not become a new archetype. I love the freedom of great stories and the escapes they provide, because reality can get boring, as can my own disbelief. Now did anyone see my copy of Spirited Away?

Matthew McKee is a Jones college sophomore and assistant News Editor.

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