Review Detail
9.1 8 10
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
8.0
September 1, 2010 @ 12:07 AM
I lost all my expectations for Shamalamadingdong the moment the credits rolled after Unbreakable. To follow up something as enjoyable as Sixth Sense with something as plodding and boring as that did not bode well for his career, and M’s career has been consistently erratic ever since.
By the time The Happening and Lady came out I had just plain given up all together and I simply didn’t even bother to watch these. But intrigued by Q2′s creative idea I trudged out and picked up copies of these maligned flicks, and proceeded to see what Q2 had achieved.
Overall, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by both movies of this double-feature. For this review I watched the Single Layer DVD5 and the video quality was good on both TV’s that I watched this on (32″ LCD and 52″ Plasma) Audio was good for both, although my rears are currently not working so cannot fully evaluate the 5.1.
The Happening.
Even after Q2′s editing, it remains that not very much happens in the Happening. It is a listless, meandering narrative. A neat idea, but not a visually interesting one. It is such a painful emulation of Hitchcock’s The Birds that I almost feel bad for Shamalamadingdong. However by slicing out the pointless sub-plot and cleaning up the more gratuitous gore, I found that overall I found the movie more interesting and more enjoyable than the original. (I watched his edit before watching the original, and upon watching the original was even more impressed). Q2 has polished this movie about as much as it can in my opinion. The movie is not great, but the editing was good. The commentary track was also very entertaining and interesting, particularly the apology
Lady in the Water
Contrary to those who reviewed this before me, I found I quite enjoyed Q2′s take on Lady. The black and white worked even more for me on this as it helped place them in a sort of undetermined twilight that helped make them feel more isolated and in a fairy tale. I wasn’t bothered by how the participants in the plan quickly bought into the story. For me, it was simply a matter of them all sensing that something bigger than themselves was going on. It was obvious that Q2 had cut out a ton of really boring exposition and useless dialog which Shama seems to bloat his screenplays with, and this kept the movie focused and moving forward. My only major critique was the manner in which he handled Giamatti going into the pool to recover her ‘key’. Not seeing him even enter or exit the water really threw me for a loop at first and it took me out of the movie while I had to figure out what had happened. While I did figure out what happened, the lack of visual assistance severely interrupted the flow of the movie and it took me a few minutes to find myself back into the movie.
Overall Enjoyment
If I had to watch either of these movies again, these are the only versions I would consider watching. Technically well executed, these are both improvements on the original.
8/10
I lost all my expectations for Shamalamadingdong the moment the credits rolled after Unbreakable. To follow up something as enjoyable as Sixth Sense with something as plodding and boring as that did not bode well for his career, and M’s career has been consistently erratic ever since.
By the time The Happening and Lady came out I had just plain given up all together and I simply didn’t even bother to watch these. But intrigued by Q2′s creative idea I trudged out and picked up copies of these maligned flicks, and proceeded to see what Q2 had achieved.
Overall, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by both movies of this double-feature. For this review I watched the Single Layer DVD5 and the video quality was good on both TV’s that I watched this on (32″ LCD and 52″ Plasma) Audio was good for both, although my rears are currently not working so cannot fully evaluate the 5.1.
The Happening.
Even after Q2′s editing, it remains that not very much happens in the Happening. It is a listless, meandering narrative. A neat idea, but not a visually interesting one. It is such a painful emulation of Hitchcock’s The Birds that I almost feel bad for Shamalamadingdong. However by slicing out the pointless sub-plot and cleaning up the more gratuitous gore, I found that overall I found the movie more interesting and more enjoyable than the original. (I watched his edit before watching the original, and upon watching the original was even more impressed). Q2 has polished this movie about as much as it can in my opinion. The movie is not great, but the editing was good. The commentary track was also very entertaining and interesting, particularly the apology
Lady in the Water
Contrary to those who reviewed this before me, I found I quite enjoyed Q2′s take on Lady. The black and white worked even more for me on this as it helped place them in a sort of undetermined twilight that helped make them feel more isolated and in a fairy tale. I wasn’t bothered by how the participants in the plan quickly bought into the story. For me, it was simply a matter of them all sensing that something bigger than themselves was going on. It was obvious that Q2 had cut out a ton of really boring exposition and useless dialog which Shama seems to bloat his screenplays with, and this kept the movie focused and moving forward. My only major critique was the manner in which he handled Giamatti going into the pool to recover her ‘key’. Not seeing him even enter or exit the water really threw me for a loop at first and it took me out of the movie while I had to figure out what had happened. While I did figure out what happened, the lack of visual assistance severely interrupted the flow of the movie and it took me a few minutes to find myself back into the movie.
Overall Enjoyment
If I had to watch either of these movies again, these are the only versions I would consider watching. Technically well executed, these are both improvements on the original.
8/10
L