The Water Man

Directed by David Oyelowo, The Water Man follows Lonnie Chavis’ Gunner as he becomes convinced that the mythical title figure holds the key to curing his mother’s (Rosario Dawson) leukemia – with this quest teaming Gunner up with a rebellious local girl (Amiah Miller’s Jo) and forcing his father (Oyelowo’s Amos) to embark on a search-and-rescue mission. It’s an appealingly old-school setup that’s employed to progressively tedious and tiresome effect by Oyelowo, as the first-time filmmaker, working from Emma Needell’s script, delivers an almost persistently generic adventure story that seems to have been cobbled together out of other, better movies – with the less-than-captivating atmosphere compounded by a pair of underwhelming child protagonists. (Chavis and Miller are fine here, performance-wise, but they’ve been shoehorned into a pair of eye-rollingly paint-by-numbers figures.) The growing emphasis on Gunner and Jo’s perilous (yet entirely lackluster) exploits, including a dangerous walk across a log bridge, does little to alleviate the pervasively uninvolving vibe, while the anticlimactic finale ensures that the whole thing ends on as unmemorable (and downright forgettable) a note as one could envision – which ultimately cements The Water Man‘s place as an earnest, well-intentioned, but completely misguided debut from an otherwise talented performer. (Only Alfred Molina, cast as a cranky local coot, manages to make anything resembling an overtly positive impact within the proceedings.)

*1/2 out of ****