This post is redeemed by the power of I'm sorry.

Haven't seen Ultraviolet so I can't compare, but I have seen tons of bad movies. Andy Warhol's "Dracula", guys? But Lady in the Water has one thing none of those movies has, and that's M Night Shylaman masturbating in slow motion for two hours.

Most bad movies are bad-schlocky: stupid plot, bad lines, deus ex machina ending, cliche narrative structure to pin things onto. Lady has all that. But most bad movies are either aware of their failings, or at least don't try to be more than what they claim, besides some Christ metaphors (Matrix, Star Wars) and crap like that. Lady is bad-transcendentally in the same way that the Star Wars prequels were bad- they buy into their self-importance and mythology wholesale. But at least Star Wars had some element of cool and mystique about some things. Not every single aspect of the mythology was retarded. Midochlorians, yes, retarded. Death Star, not retarded. Ewoks, retarded. Emperor's Guards, not retarded. Luke, retard; Han Solo, not a retard.

Lady's mythology is completely stupid from start to finish. Narfs, evil grass dogs who are poison, evil tree monkeys, and a magic eagle. The Narf has magic mud to cure the grass dog poison. A writer looks at her and gets inspired. Then the eagle picks her up and flies away. But there are some humans who help out. The healer, the guild, the guardian, and the symbologist. It felt kind of like one of those South Park episodes, where they dumb up the adult stories while the kids watch in disbelief, e.g. the Scientology episodes.

I could go on for a couple more pages, but I've wasted too much of my time on this lousy movie already. I wanted to like it, as I think Shylaman has done some interesting, if unrealized, things in the past, e.g., Signs was brilliant up until the saved-by-water ending. And the whole 'fairy tale comes to life' thing is a promising type of story to try and tell.

In sum, most movies are bad because they didn't try hard enough. This movie is exceptionally bad, because it tries so very very hard. I'm sorry.