Ugh!

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2002)

NOTE: Bear in mind that I sat down in the theater to watch this movie with *very* high expectations; ready to suspend my critical facilities a bit and let the director work some magic on me. I did my part.
That's it. I'm giving up on this director. It's not that I expect every one of his movies to deliver the same payload that "The Sixth Sense" did; but I expect him to deliver *something*.
This movie was a....well, I was about to say "a mess", but that's not it. It was just plain insipid. A stupid failure on many fronts.
*** spoilers ***
I was very curious about and full of anticipation for the resolution on the early characterization of the emotionally closed family. I guess the dinner table crying scene was supposed to be that resolution. Or something. But it didn't get resolved in a satisfactory manner.
The aliens were stupid. The film was like a couple of neighborhood kids making an alien movie during their summer break, except their neighborhood is Palos Verdes, and they have millions in their budget. "OK, let's make 'em *reeeeel* creepy, y'know! Like, with big; I mean really *BIG* gross fingernails! Yeah! And they have to have reeeeeally scary teeth! Yeah, like, and like, they don't have toothpaste on the planet they come from!" In the larger view, the aliens were like a weird carbuncle on the hiney of this movie. I did not see the point of even having aliens in this movie, except it was not impossible to dovetail them into the clumsy skeinwork of the plot.
The dialog gives new depth and meaning to the term "wooden." And I do mean that; it's not wooden in the normal sense. Maybe the correct descriptor is "waxy;" like dialog that wax museum dummies might exchange. It's unremittingly and interminably clever, seeking to find it's trenchancy within seconds of expression, vs. laying back a bit and contributing to the building up of a powerful scenario or storyline. The few places where cross references happen (e.g., Mel's wife's last dying words and the alien confrontation scene) are so contrived and cheap you can see the duct tape holding the plot together.
The sad thing about a movie like this is that its failure is obvious. You could plainly see that the director was trying to say something about the power of the spiritual; and he failed. He tried to say something about providential reasons for accepting individual quirks and seeming flaws in the people around us; and maybe only delivered on a dimly intellectual level. He tried to say something about the positive impact of adversity on our deeper selves; and dropped the ball. When, at the end, I saw Gibson dressing up in his collar to do his priestly rounds again, I could see why this was supposed to make sense from the standpoint of the director's good intentions, but shook my head that this movie simply failed to bring so many of us along for that ride.
I guess I've said enough. Someone pull the plug on the Shyamalan juggernaut, please.
Thanks for reading. I'll go now.