Shyamalan schmaltz

Rating: 4/10 (20 May 2007)

Here is a man who could be a great writer/director but instead goes for the bucks and banality. He knows how to tell a tale. He knows how to create tension. He knows how to get the most from his actors. He doesn't know how to make the story make sense nor leave out the hyper sentimentality. Yes, he does know how to make money and that's what it's all about. I've seen most of his movies, usually leaving the theatre or my TV thinking, why wasn't that better? "Signs" is clearly such a movie. He immediately grabs our attention with the "signs" in the corn field and slowly feeds us more info, building tension all the way. When the "martians" as I will call them, even though they undoubtedly came from billions of miles away, are playing cat and mouse, it's exciting. When more and more "signs" show they are probably hostile, we continue to wonder what will happen. And then we find out. Nothing much. It is so utterly unbelievable that an advanced race, at least technologically, would come all the way to earth to "harvest" us and walk around "naked" on a planet with 70% water, when water kills them. Stupid. They would wear some protective costume. It's also unbelievable that they could come all that way with no weapons. Hostile creatures have weapons to destroy enemies. They didn't travel all the way to the Earth looking for better scenery. They came to conquer us, with what? Their bare hands? This is really a silly plot. We don't even see them attack anything. We just hear them rumbling around upstairs, like burglars who dropped by. Then they leave mysterious designs cut into the walls. OOOOH. Scary. Then the big confrontation with the eight fingered nudie. Phoenix conquers it with a baseball bat! It could have been Neanderthal vs. Homo Sapien. The subplot (main plot) about the self unfrocked minister and his rejection of god, is just lame. His wife is killed when she decides to go for a walk in the middle of the night along a highway. Surpirse! A truck hits her. Well, that is unlucky, but maybe it would be better to go for a walk on your vast farm. So Mel blames god. OK. Blame him for having a stupid president while you're at it. Then when his son might die from the secret poison gas of goofy the alien, he prays to god and god saves his son. Pretty fickle this god. So he returns to the cloth. Is this a plot or propaganda put out by the cathlolic church...or in his Night's case, the Episcolpal church? Oh well, it made money. Surely no one in his right conscious mind would accuse M. Night of being a great writer. There's just no logic to any of his work. But who needs that when you keep rolling away wheelbarrows of cash?