What does this mean?

Off to see The Village with a mini-City Video reunion (me, PL, Brennon and Sara... ok, so Sara's not really coming, but we'll pretend Tim is a Native American girl). I don't have high hopes. I mean... the trailer is nifty. But then again, Night's trailers are always nifty. And I always end up hating the movie itself.

Anyway, here's the real point of this post:
I was going through the Shamlama's old Metacritic scores and stumbled upon the following blurb from (the dearly departed) Elvis Mitchell.

"[Shyamalan] is like Shaq without the tattoos."

What the fuck?

OK, to be fair, here's the sentence before that:
"Mr. Shyamalan may be the only mainstream director hankering for success with a need to understate."

Um, I guess in context it kind of makes sense. Kind of. But Elvis is tripping.