My review of M. Night Shyamalan’s new film <i>Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan</i>

My review of M. Night Shyamalan’s new film Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan

Posted on July 2nd, 2010 by Ricky Sprague

This week I would like to review the latest film from master filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, entitled Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan. This is an exciting movie with lots of great twists and turns like you’ve come to expect from this unpredictable filmmaker, so hold on tight while I give you my four-star review (full disclosure: I did not actually see the film).

Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you don’t want to know about all the great twists, then don’t read any more. Go on, I dare you not to read it (please read it — also, click on the ad at the bottom of this review)!

First of all, the thing that I think will dazzle everyone is that M. Night Shyamalan stayed so true to the source material. It’s based on a cartoon show called The Snorks, about a bunch of little things that live under the water and ejaculate out of the tops of their heads. They are called the water people, and in Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan they are only one of four groups of people that live with other elements.

The Shyamalan is able to communicate with the water people (“Snorks”) by appearing to them as a floating head. Some of the water people worship the Shyamalan, as you can see from the prostrate position of the pink (“girl”) Snork. The Snorks hold the key to the mythical Eighth Event, and the Shyamalan has to use his mystical floating head powers to get to its all-powerful secret eyeball truth.

The water people, or the Snorks, are the first people. The Snorks who are the best at making water are called “Water Benders.” Then there are the soccer people. They love to play soccer, and the best ones are called “Beckham Benders.” The soccer people were clearly put in this movie to appeal to a more international audience, because of the World Cup, since I didn’t understand a lot of this part. But this is not to imply that the movie is in any way hard to follow. Everything makes perfect sense in the context of the movie, because M. Night Shyamalan explains everything so well.

One of the soccer people dies at the beginning at the movie.

Something else that the Shyamalan can do is turn his head into a soccer ball. This comes in handy for the scene where the Shyamalan has to turn his head into a soccer ball, so that he can find out what is happening with the Beckham Benders, because if they get the true secret of mystical sauce, then the pretzel will melt before the third night of the dragon.

Then there is the third group of people, who are called “The Flamers,” because they love to play with fire! Well, it turns out that one of the fire benders is actually the soccer guy who died at the beginning of the movie! He came back to life as a fire bender, but he’s not the real Shyamalan, even though everybody thinks that he is for about ten minutes.

It turns out the real Shyamalan is M. Night Shyamalan (he cast himself). I should explain that in the movie, a “Shyamalan” is a person who can bend all of the stuff — the water, the soccer balls, the fire, and the other element, which is fast food (sorry I got caught up in the story and forgot to mention the merchandising bender!). The Shyamalan is actually supposedly an “Avatar,” but that was already a movie, even though The Snorks came before Avatar, the movie studio still had to change him to a “Shyamalan” because of copyright concerns.

This is all explained when the Master of Copyrights comes out of this cave, and tells M. Night Shyamalan that he can’t call himself an Avatar anymore (he calls himself that for about the first fifteen minutes). Then, M. Night Shyamalan raises his stick, and causes all the water to squirt all over the Master of Copyrights, and then he kicks a soccer ball at him, and the soccer ball is covered in flames and the Master of Copyrights explodes into a bunch of French fries, and the Snorks eat the French fries. That is how you know he is the Last Shyamalan! That, and the fact that he yells out, “I am the Last Shyamalan!” right after he lets the Master of Copyrights have it.

M. Night Shyamalan cast himself as The Last Shyamalan, the all-powerful one who has the ability to bend everything in the universe. He uses his amazing powers to make the greatest movie of all time, and then he shows the movie to representatives of the all-knowing Wise Ones, who come out of their caves riding on Mormon vampires, to fight the werewolves that are trying to capture this twitchy teenage girl who doesn’t like living where it rains so much. They decide the movie is good that they won’t destroy the world.

One thing I did wonder about was, Why did the man with the raft suddenly decide to start flying instead of floating on the water? If he could fly the whole time, shouldn’t he have done that in the first place? Unless he was the same guy who just learned how to fly in the middle of the movie, but I thought that guy died?

The script is where Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan really shines. It is full of great lines such as “You must learn to listen with your nose,” and “When you bounce a ball on the water, then will you find true peace.” (I’m not exactly sure if those are the actual lines, because I was trying to write in the dark and I couldn’t see anything.) A potentially confusing and complicated story is kept in check because all of the characters are so distinguished from each other. One guy for instance talks like Deepak Chopra, while another one talks like Andrew Weil, and so on.

I only wish this movie was about twenty minutes longer!

Oh, and by the way, don’t get me started on the action. I guess if I had to pick a favorite part, it was probably the part where the Snorks fought against the Flamers, and M. Night Shyamalan was caught in the middle. The way everybody was flying around and kicking each other was exciting, but not too exciting since at no point did I ever worry that anything bad would happen to M. Night Shyamalan, who was holding a camera and yelling at The Cinematographer, “Can we get a little less light in here? It’s too bright and I can actually tell what’s going on!”

Well, I know I’ve whetted your appetite for seeing this exciting, thought-provoking movie, and I hope that you will see it based on my recommendation. It’s probably not as good as M. Night Shyamalan’s last movie, The Shittening, but it’s a little bit better than the one he made before that, Turd in the Water. Four stars! Or, as the water benders would say, “Four Snorks!”

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Ricky Sprague

Ricky Sprague occasionally writes and/or draws things. He sometimes animates things. He has a Twitter account and he has a blog. He scripted this graphic novel about Kolchak The Night Stalker. He is really, really good at putting links in bios.