Review: "The Lake House"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

**1/2 stars (out of four)
108 minutes, Now Showing

Maybe I'm just too cynical. Maybe I've seen too many movies and have become too experienced at picking up clues in the narrative. Maybe if I wasn't as experienced in such matters, I would have enjoyed it more. I dunno. It makes the question of how to evaluate this movie tricky - trickier still, the question of how exactly to address my problems without spoiling everything for those who are not as cynical as I.

All I can say is, something happens within the first, say, 15 minutes of "The Lake House." Something that the plot treats as relatively insignificant at the time, but for me, it was immediately apparent what had happened and what that meant. From that moment on, watching the film became an exercise in when it would catch up with me.

It didn't until about five minutes before the end credits, which is unfortunate. I don't like being that far ahead of the storytellers. I like being surprised, tricked, fooled. When a filmmaker can catch me off guard successfully, no one is more delighted than I. But the cynical side of me can often rear its head and ruin the surprises well in advance. When that happens, I am disappointed. Not just that I have been spoiled a surprising twist, but that the filmmakers weren't able to put one over on me. Come on, guys. It's not that hard. I'm not THAT smart.

What makes it doubly a shame is that there's a lot to like in "The Lake House." The main characters are nice people, who you want to see together. The performances are good, the writing has a lot of nice touches, and the story has a lot of promise. If it didn't all come together for me, well, maybe that was just me. Maybe you'll fare better.

The plot is located at the intersection of "Love Letters" and "The Twilight Zone." We meet a woman named Kate (Sandra Bullock) who is moving out of a house located on a lake just outside Chicago. To say on the lake is not as accurate as saying above the lake - it's a glass structure supported on stilts suspended high above the water. It's imaginative and unique, though one does wonder about the bathroom facilities, but never mind.

Anyway, Kate's moving out, and she leaves a note in the house's mailbox for the next tenant. We then see the letter being retrieved by Alex (Keanu Reeves) as he is moving in. He's confused by the letter - no one has lived in the house for years. He should know, his dad (a great architect played by Christopher Plummer) built the place himself. He writes back that she is mistaken. She writes back that she most certainly is not, and asks if Alex could please forward all her mail to her new address. Alex goes there only to find the apartment she lives in hasn't been built yet.

It becomes quickly apparent to them that he is writing to her from the year 2004, and she is writing to him from the year 2006. They are astonishingly quick at figuring this out and accepting it, all things considered (to a degree they seemed less ready to believe it in the trailer than in the actual movie), but then, it becomes equally apparent that they are falling in love. When that happens, more inexplicable elements become less important. Just like in real life.

So we have two people who clearly are meant to be together, separated by a gulf of time. Now, how do they get together...or even can they? This is an intriguing premise, with all sorts of possibilities of what could impact such a relationship. She tells him facts about his current time, which astonish him when they come true. She waxes rhapsodic about the trees at the lake which she misses, and then is astounded when a tree appears in front of her new place (he planted it). At one point, he coincidentally meets her at a party in 2004, but says nothing about what he knows - but then, how could he? If he did, she'd think him crazy, right? And going further, if he did, isn't it possible that he has then altered the timeline, and then she'd never start writing him, and thus then they'd never meet at all?

These are tantalizing questions that the film could have dealt with, but the movie side-steps them all in favor of adding in some relatively standard and contrived obstacles. In 2004, she's dating an utter tool by the name of Morgan (Dylan Walsh), who she is clearly unhappy with, but who pops in and out of the story as necessary to add complications. When the two of them try to arrange a meeting and things go awry, things go sour between the two of them with such bizarre haste that it feels less like honest emotional reaction to the situation and more like the screenplay pulling the strings. The writer is David Auburn, a Pultizer Prize winner and writer of the play and film "Proof," though this script is adapted from a previous film. Maybe he got handcuffed by the requirements of the plot from the previous work - you get the impression that so much more was possible here.

There really is a lot to like here. I enjoyed both Bullock and Reeves's performances, as it's pretty clear these two have good chemistry as an on-screen couple that Hollywood should have reunited long ago. There are all sorts of nifty screen tricks to establish the "conversations" that these two have in their letters, though if you follow the logic of the letter writing such conversations are impossible. The director, Alejandro Agresti, has a nice flair for visuals and pacing. I enjoyed a lot of the film as it was happening.

At least, to the extent I could, given that I knew precisely where it was going, and how. It really disappointed me that the climax was laid so plain so early on, as it prevented me from getting truly invested in the fate of these characters. As far as I could see, it had already happened. Which, in a way, it had. So, the movie didn't quite work for me. But hey, maybe it'll work for you. Give it a shot and see.