Producers: David Oyelowo, Carla Gardini, Shivani Rawat and Monica Levinson   Director: David Oyelowo   Screenplay: Emma Needell   Cast: Lonnie Chavis, David Oyelowo, Rosario Dawson, Amiah Miller, Alfred Molina, Maria Bello, Ted Rooney and John Henry Whitaker   Distributor: RLJE Films

Grade:  C+

On-screen magic is an elusive quality: David Oyelowo’s directorial debut is eager to enchant us, but it doesn’t quite manage the trick.  Still, this coming-of-age story with supernatural elements deserves credit for addressing some serious issues about life and death without descending into bathos.

The main character is young Gunner Boone (Lonnie Chavis), who’s recently moved to a small town with his mom Mary (Rosario Dawson) and dad Amos (Oyelowo), a Navy man just returned from a tour in Japan.  Gunner’s a studious  lad who borrows volume after volume from the local bookstore, as well as an aspiring artist and writer, working on a graphic novel about a detective investigating his own murder.  He’s close to his mom, but less so to his long-absent dad, whose attempts to bond prove clumsy.

Mary is seriously ill, and the frightened boy determines to set aside his work and do everything he can  to make sure she survives.  When his study of possible medication is rebuffed by her nurses, he takes a different tack.  From a reclusive mortician (Alfred Molina) he learns of a local legend, Edward Schaal (Ted Rooney), called the Water Man because a century earlier while mining he had found a vein of a strange metal that saved him from drowning when a dam broke and killed off the local populace, including his wife.  Ever since then the phantom-like figure has haunted the forest, supposedly searching for her body in order to use the metal to revivify her.  Gunner believes that if he finds the Water Man, he can learn the secret of immortality and use it to restore Mary’s health. 

So Gunner approaches Jo (Amiah Miller), a tough homeless girl who claims to have encountered the Water Man and charges youngsters a small fee to tell them about the experience.  Gunner hires her to take him to the place in the forest where she says the legendary figure can be found.

While the two go off into the wilderness, Amos grows concerned about Gunner’s absence and joins forces with the sheriff (Maria Bello) to search for him.  Eventually he learns that the boy is searching the forest to find the Water Man, and follows after him.

Much of the film is devoted to Gunner and Jo’s adventures as they trudge deeper and deeper into the woods.  Some are dangerous—avoiding a stampede of wild horses, trying to climb a log across a gorge.  There’s a threat from a wildfire as well.  And gradually they come to understand one another, though it can’t be said that their ideas and motives coincide.  Meanwhile Amos continues his search, having learned from the mortician where they might be headed.

There are times when “The Water Man” achieves the mythic feel it’s straining for, as when Gunner thinks that it’s begun to snow in the forest, though in reality the flakes are ash from the fire he doesn’t realize is nearby.  Elsewhere, however, the effort doesn’t come off: the employment of Gunner’s book, rendered in black-and-white animation (as is the tale of The Water Man’s past), to convey the story’s moral, is obvious, and the sequence in which the boy finally encounters the legendary figure, intended to have a hallucinatory quality, is curiously bland.  The entire physical production—Matthew J. Lloyd’s cinematography, Laurence Bennett’s production design and Blu Murray’s editing, as well as Oyelowo’s direction—feels more dutiful than inspired, and the same might be said of Peter Baert’s score.

Nor does Oyelowo secure performances from his young stars that lift the material.  Both Chavis and Miller are engaging without being charismatic, and while Dawson and Molina are both fine (and Oyelowo as the worried father is as well), they’re all definitely supporting players. 

“The Water Man” is clearly an earnest effort to grapple with important themes about life and death through a coming-of-age narrative, but it ends up more prosaic than poetic.