Watching The Sixth Sense is akin to eating a diarrhea sandwich on garlic bread--- it could be good if there was something tasty in the middle. What was undoubtedly the most overrated movie of 1999 does not hold up to reflections upon it three years late.

Popcorn cinema veteran Bruce Willis tones it down for his role as troubled psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe, who, while preparing for a lascivious night with his wife (Olivia Williams), finds himself confronted by an angry, underwear-clad ex-patient. The patient shoots him on the spot. One year later, Crowe begins to study a precocious nine-year-old product of a single parent. Young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) lives with his mother (Toni Collette) and, if you believe what he tells Crowe about a third into the film, a host of dead spirits who present themselves to him.

Novice director M. Night Shyalaman made his commerical debut with this somber thriller. Shyamalan also penned the pedestrian script. The Philadelphia-set movie is a little too bleak, and it's rarely thrilling. There are a spotty few jump-worthy sequences, but for the most part, the biggest chunk of the movie is utterly boring. The opener, up to and including the attack on Crowe's life, is effective, as is the epilogue, which unveils the film's trump card--- the jarring twist ending. Truly, this is why the film got all the good press that it got. Without the benefit of that ending, there's little to raise this movie above the level of conventional Hollywood slop.

Truth be told, while the action in The Sixth Sense does little to get the heart pumping, the performances are solid. Action movie vet Willis is amazing here. He proves himself to be more than the charming wise-guy everyman and asserts himself as an "ac-TOR" with his understated take on Crowe--- there's no "yippie ki yay, muthaf****" bravado to be found here, nor any over-the-top muscle-flexin' action sequences. Though Willis has dutifully made solid attempts to break the mold before--- in In Country and 12 Monkeys, most notably--- he's at his best here.

Toni Collette is pretty heartfelt too, playing flustered single mom to a 't'. Former New Kids on the Block member Donnie Wahlberg steals his lone scene as the homi-suicidal ex-patient who attacks Crowe in the very beginning of the movie. The most-lauded member of this cast of characters is Haley Joel Osment, who eventually ends up being one of the blemishes on the film's acting scorecard. His utterly drab performance--- inexplicably nominated for an Academy Award in 2000--- is, upon occasions, flinchingly bad. Other times, it's merely boring. Either way, Oscar material it ain't.

But, a few good performances don't a good movie make, and though they may elevate it slightly, The Sixth Sense suffers from overhype and boring melodrama. If you're one of the handful of people who haven't seen it, and you must satisfy your curiosity, go ahead and rent it. But it steals certain themes and twists from earlier films like Lady in White and A Pure Formality, and doesn't even justify the theft by making it interesting. If only they could have made a film on the caliber of it's much-lauded ending, The Sixth Sense could have been genuinely good--- great, really, if more thought was put into it.

As is, it's a fluff drama with little to offer. Though M. Night's follow-up, Unbreakable fared much, much better, this one is a clunker on most accounts. Don't bother.






Recommended: No