The Water Man review

It’s easy to like and appreciate The Water Man even if those feelings never truly flow to love.

Gunner (Lonnie Chavis, This Is Us) is adjusting to life in a new town. He’s yet to make many friends besides the local bookkeeper, but that’s fine as it just allows him more time to focus on creating his detective graphic novel.

Friends are hardly the biggest concern when his mother, Mary (Rosario Dawson, The Mandalorian) is seemingly getting sicker by the day. And Gunner’s already strained relationship with his father, Amos (David Oyelowo, Come Away) is getting increasingly rougher.

This is a tried and true…and tired approach that the clueless father just doesn’t understand. And in this instance it feels especially unwarranted since they’re both just struggling to cope with what’s going on with Mary and the non-cliche approach would have definitely felt fresher.

During an encounter with the local mortician (Alfred Molina in a fun, quirky supporting role), Gunner starts hearing the urban legend of The Water Man, a creature of lore who survived a deadly flood thanks to a magical stone in his possession. If Gunner could track down The Water Man and borrow the stone, maybe there’s a chance he could heal his mother?

As far as fantasy premises go, that’s a solid one and taps into a child’s desire to magically make real world problems disappear. The notion of a potential parental death is weighty though so screenwriter Emily A. Needell tries to insert a little levity with Jo (Amiah Miller, War for the Planet of the Apes), a girl who claims she barely survived an encounter with The Water Man.

Jo is written like many modern young girls in family films. She’s tough, takes no nonsense and runs all over her male counterpart. I rarely enjoy that dynamic in children’s movies and found it less endearing than normal here since Gunner frequently seems to get bullied and harassed on his own quest by his partner.

Let alone the obvious questionable look of a black boy getting bossed around by a white girl. Some of these issues could have been addressed easier with the inclusion of a third kid to join the quest and take the brunt of Jo’s abuse.

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Oyelowo makes his directorial debut and it’s solid. He shows such a keen eye for staging shots and credibly building moments that it’s not hard to envision Oyelowo thriving behind the camera as easily as he does in front of it.

He adds some fun wrinkles to the presentation specifically with animating Gunner’s graphic novels as he crafts and the dramatic framing of characters.

Chavis has been earning a masters in dramatic acting with his work on This Is Us so it wasn’t shocking that he’s more than capable of handling those aspects of the film.

At times I wish Oyelowo were more selfish with his screen time. There’s some nice moments with Dawson, but they’re too few and are mostly told from the perspective of how Gunner is doing.

Adventure quests always make for good material for family films, but there’s a level of restraint and an approach from all sides that doesn’t make this one nearly as much fun.

While it runs a respectable 91 minutes the film still manages to feel too long and aimless at times. A mini-subplot with Sheriff Goodwin (Maria Bello, Prisoners) searching for the kids never feels necessary and is more of a distraction than worthwhile use of screen time.

The pacing is a little slow and there’s a few thematic elements — dead bodies, domestic abuse and cancer — that don’t make for the most thrilling subplots for younger children.

The Water Man is a well-intentioned film with an obvious earnest intent to entertain that doesn’t quite reach new heights.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Photo Credit: RLJE Films