For his first feature in a directorial capacity, British actor David Oyelowo, working from Emily A. Needell’s screenplay, embarked on a fantastical adventure fueled by real-world tribulations. The end result, “The Water Man,” while not altogether graceless, registers as tonally disjointed and ultimately inconsequential in spite of its star-fronted cast.
New in a small American town, Gunner (Lonnie Chavis), an imaginative teenage boy working on an intriguing graphic novel, learns his mother (a stupendous Rosario Dawson) is battling leukemia. Amos, the family’s military patriarch (Oyelowo in an adequate role), finds his son’s interests odd, thus their communication suffers.