Finishing off metformin hcl 850 mg our Shyamalan-a-thon is a a script review. Labor of Love is one of Night’s first scripts and his first spec sale he made back in 1993 for a reported $750,000 to Fox. That’s a pretty hefty sum. So when I had the idea for reviewing this to close out the Shyamalan-a-thon, I decided to leave it to a professional and asked for a guest review from the great Carson Reeves over at Scriptshadow. Carson does daily reviews of hot scripts floating around Hollywood that range from the completely unknown to bigger works like last week’s review of Alfonso Cuarón’s next film, Gravity. If you want to be a screenwriter, there’s no better place to read analysis and learn what kind of screenplays are currently selling in Hollywood.
If you’re interested in reading the script for yourself, here’s a link to Labor of Love. Being that this is a script review, there will obviously be spoilers.
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I suppose metformin hydrochloride brand name I should start off my review by stating my opinion on M. Night. That could be an entire article in itself so I’ll try and keep it short. M. Night has genius in him, but I’m afraid it’s such a tiny spec of who he is that it’s already been used up. And most of that genius, of course, was dumped into The Sixth Sense, a film I still believe has the best ending of the last 15 years.
Having said that, I’m going to make a surprise proclamation. Night was a victim. Yes, I said it. Night’s success hit right at the turn of the century when we may not have had Twitter or 30 major movie blogs yet, but the 24 Hour News cycle was definitely underway, with AintItCoolNews at its peak and an entire new subculture of people who wanted to discuss movies 24/7. In short, that time was the birth of the overhype – where nothing could live up to its buzz. See The Phantom Menace and The Matrix sequels as other casualties of the time.
Now that’s not to say Night doesn’t share the responsibility. This is a man who strives to make Citizen Kane every time out, not realizing that most of his scripts are more on par with Barbershop 2. One of the surest ways to churn out crap is to overestimate your talents. Where Night is and where he thinks he is may equal the distance between here and the sun.
Here’s my beef with M. Night. I’ve read he has some checklist where his ideas must pass eight tests before he can commit to them. Something about having a symbolic protagonist, four levels of subtext, a spiritual construct, a connection to a famous fairytale and blah blahblah blah blah blah. Not to be rude but here’s an idea. GIVE US A FUCKING MOVIE THAT ENTERTAINS! Start with that and screw your damn checklist. If you can give me an entertaining movie, I don’t need any of your stupid checklist items. I mean you’ve made at least 5 bonafied terrible movies, so I think that goes to show that the checklist isn’t working. Just drop all the nonsense and give us a film we’re going to enjoy. Is that so much to ask?
A depressing fan's sketch of Night's downfall.
Labor of Love is one of Night’s first screenplays, selling for a pretty penny back in the 90′s, and I’ve actually read several reviews of it over the years. It sounded to me like an overly sappy piece of garbage to be honest and my feeling is, if you make a $300 million surprise masterpiece and there’s a back catalog script you can’t get produced afterwards, it’s probably a bad script. So with that level of enthusiasm, let’s dig in!
Labor of Love is about Maurice Parker. Maurice is like a lot of men who’ve stopped trying in their marriages. Inevitably your wife gets upset and after a few attempts at rectifying the situation, you give up. As a result both partners live with this cataclysmic divide between them that can last for months and sometimes years if left unchecked. That may not be the case here but it’s getting close. Maurice simply doesn’t do anything for his wife anymore.
That sucks for Maurice because some kid with too many bud lights in his system plows into her after a late night party, killing her.
Cut to two weeks earlier where we get a handful of scenes that drill into our heads one thing: Maurice never SHOWED his wife any love. Ironically, instead of *showing* us this, Night *tells* us this, about 1,500 times. The wife keeps saying to Maurice, “You never SHOW me you love me.” “You never SHOW me you care.” I don’t know why she’s facing Maurice when she says this because she’s clearly talking to us. “Hey audience! Maurice doesn’t SHOW me his love! Remember that! It’ll be important later!”
So Widower Maurice, who huffs like a racehorse just going up a few stairs, decides to finally SHOW his wife he loves her by walking all the way across the United States Of America.
Once he starts, a friend of his writes a story about his journey that’s picked up by the local media. It causes a bit of a stir, but more importantly it notifies Adelle, Maurice’s niece, to what he’s doing. As a doctor, she’s convinced that Maurice’s lack of exercise will result in him dying on this trip so she goes on a massive search to stop him.
Along the way, Maurice runs into a handful of obstacles. He gets beaten up by a couple of hicks from Indiana. He saves some mom and her kid after a car wreck. And he gets really really sunburnt. I mean we’re talking don’t-touch-me-that-hurts sunburnt.
In addition, we keep flashing back to Maurice and his wife’s past – where they met, where they had their first kiss, where they had life-changing conversations. For example we find out she wanted kids but he didn’t. This is presented as a big deal but since kids aren’t part of the plot in any way shape or form, it feels more like Night trying to push any emotional button he can find.
Anyway, in the end, beaten and bruised, his organs bleeding internally, barely able to place one foot in front of the other, he trudges forward to the California ocean. Does he make it? Oh, wouldn’t you like to know. And I’d tell you if I thought you cared, but you don’t. I know this because this screenplay made me want to suffocate myself in animal excrement. Show me you love me? More like show me a story. Sappy ugly blechy chewey yucky mucky nonsense.
Okay, where to begin. This whole screenplay is built on a lie. Not a lie lie, but a screenplay lie. It’s vapor, and I’ll explain what I mean by that. Night didn’t apply basic Screenwriting 101 tools here. He *told* instead of *showed.* This is what I was referring to earlier and the irony is thick since that’s what the whole story is about (*showing* his wife love). Instead of a series of events that SHOWED Maurice not caring for his wife, we’re TOLD over and over again by her that he doesn’t care. “You don’t care about me. You never do anything for me. Why aren’t you showing me that you love me? You need to show me you love me. You wouldn’t walk across the country for me.” Whenever your dialogue is on-the-nose, it kills any realism you hope to achieve because in real life, people don’t walk around saying, “You don’t love me.” They don’t give out instruction booklets that explain exactly what you have to do to prove your love. They argue about completely insignificant stuff, with the real problem always bubbling underneath. They avoid each other. They settle into a tension-filled routine. The second characters in a screenplay change those rules and start telling each other exactly what’s on their mind, they draw attention to the fact that this is a fictional story. And so everything that comes after it – in this case the entire movie – feels artificial.
Now on top of that, I’m sorry but I’m just going to say it – a wife who nags and nags and nags and nags is annoying. We get ten minutes with this woman and all she does the whole time is complain! If I wanted that, I’d get back together with my ex-girlfriend. How are you going to root for a character who’s doing something for someone we don’t even like? Come on now.
But the biggest reason the script doesn’t work is the most obvious one. HE’S WALKING!
A man walks. That’s your story?? A man WALKS?? Okay, I’m sure that if you put me in the room with some fitness guru and a doctor they could convince me with statistics and charts that walking 3000 miles is really hard and really dangerous. Maybe you could even convince me that under the wrong circumstances, it could kill a man. But that doesn’t matter. Because to me and everyone else watching the movie, it’s WALKING! I walk every day. You walk every day. People spend 20% of their lives walking. Walking IS NOT DANGEROUS. I’ve never once read a news story about a man dying of walking. I don’t care if you light my sneakers on fire. I’d still be able to walk to San Francisco by Sunday.
There are some things Night kinda does right here. He creates this huge character goal which keeps the story focused. Every character has something going on and something to do, which is more than I can say for all the amateur scripts I read. He has a nice character arc in Adelle, the niece. She’s dead set against Maurice walking as she thinks it will kill him. Her reversal is one of the more poignant moments in the story. And I will say that in the end, when Maurice is walking that last stretch of road and everybody’s lined up on the side cheering him on, it was a little emotional.
But these successes were like pebbles amongst a sea of boulders.
At the end of my reviews I usually have a section where I say what I learned from the screenplay. One of the things I always preach is giving your main character a clear strong goal. Labor of Love has that goal and yet it still fails miserably. So I think I learned that that goal, no matter how strong, still has to resonate with the audience and not just the character. WE have to think it’s interesting and worthy in order to commit, not just them.
I’ll wrap up by saying I don’t know where Night goes from here. I’m afraid he’s become the fantastical version of Michael Bay, with the difference being that his movies don’t make any money. If I were him, I’d stop with all this 8 layer burrito bullshit and just go back to finding a good hook, creating a few solid characters, and telling a fun story. If he doesn’t he’s going to keep making movies where plants chase people and depressing mermaids live in pools. Water’s probably a good place to end this review because until his movies prove me wrong, his career is squarely in the toilet.
