The Lake House
The story begins in 2006 when a lonely female doctor named Kate (Sandra Bullock) leaves her beloved lake house behind to move to the city of Chicago for a hospital job. Before she leaves home, she lays a letter in the mailbox telling whoever is to move into the house after her to forward any of her mail that may show up at the lake house after she leaves. The man who receives her letter is an equally lonely architect named Alex (Keanu Reeves), but it's not quite that simple. You see, when Alex moves into the lake house, the year is 2004. Needless to say, he's somewhat confused by this letter he finds left behind in his mailbox from the house's "previous tenant" when no one has lived in the house for years in his time. Through some sort of cosmic force that is wisely left unexplained by the screenplay by David Auburn, these two people separated by two years are somehow able to exchange letters back and forth to each other through the means of this magical mailbox. This being a romantic drama, the two begin to fall in love through their letters and try to meet with each other, even though they have actually met in the past but just did not know it. (Are you still following this?) Their fated meeting runs into a series of set backs too complicated to summarize, and it turns out the only way they can get together is by altering history. Thrown into the plot is Alex's estranged father (Christopher Plummer), and a cute little dog who may be the key connection between these two lovers separated years apart from each other.
It is a credit to Argentinian director Alejandro Agresti that he somehow is able to make The Lake House work in some way despite its overly convoluted and silly storyline that becomes all the more harder to swallow when you try to apply logic to it after the movie is done. How it accomplishes this tricky task is by playing down the melodrama as little as possible (though there are still some moments that will have the women in the audience reaching for the Kleenex), and most of all by not trying to overly explain how this phenomenon is happening. In other words, in order to truly enjoy this movie, you kind of have to stop trying to figure it out and just go with it. Even then, there are still a number of plot hole hurdles you'll have to be willing to jump through. For example, in one of Kate's letters, she mentions to Alex that although she enjoys her new city home, she misses the trees that used to grow around the lake house. Alex decides to correct this problem back in 2004 by planting some trees in the place where the apartment building that Kate is living in will be in 2006. (In Alex's 2004 time, Kate's apartment building home is just a construction site.) As soon as Alex finishes planting the tree, a beautiful fully grown tree magically appears right in front of Kate's eyes in 2006. It's a cute idea, but the film fails to explain how nobody but her happens to notice this tree suddenly appearing seemingly out of nowhere. You'd think the other people in Kate's building would find it odd that there's a tree outside that wasn't there before. Also problematic is how willing these two seem to be to change history and the very flow of time itself just so that they can meet and be together.
Thankfully, the characters are mostly grounded in reality so that the plot doesn't fly too out of control. Both Kate and Alex and likeable, and although they don't spend enough time together for us to want to see them get together, we at least like them enough to want them both to be happy. They are wonderfully old fashioned and intelligent characters who talk about books and ideas in their letters. A lot of the charm is also mainly due to the two lead performers. Much has been made that this is the first time Bullock and Reeves have worked together since 1994's Speed, the film that cemented Reeves as an action star and jump-started Bullock's career. Though they spend little actual time in the same scene together, they are both able to create likeable and feasible characters amongst the chaos of the plot. Bullock's Kate is a sad and somewhat worn woman who feels that love has passed her by one too many times. She uses her smile and a slightly sharp sense of humor to hide her pain and loneliness, but she is obviously a vulnerable woman. Sandra Bullock does a great job with her role, as she is able to tackle all sides of her character without falling into the trap of becoming too cute or coming across as being desperate to be loved. Reeves' role is a bit more limited, due to the fact that the screenplay does not seem to be as interested in him as Bullock's character. I admire that Keanu Reeves tried to tackle a more everyman role with this film, but he seems underwritten and less developed as a character. Still, he does what he can, and he does have a few touching moments and some genuine acting scenes such as when he is looking at past photos of his father.
Speaking of the father, there are a number of subplots concerning Reeves' family, including the gruff and uncaring father who is also an architect and originally designed the lake house years ago. The movie hints at a strained relationship between the two, due to the fact that the father cared more about his own personal success than his own family, but doesn't seem to dig deep enough, which made me question why the movie even bothered with the subplot in the first place. It feels tacked on, and although Christopher Plummer is strong enough in the role as Reeves' father, we never quite get the emotional attachment between the two actors that the film seems to need in order for it to work. Equally underdeveloped is Bullock's best friend at work (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo from House of Sand and Fog), who seems to be less a character and more of an automatic device to dispense words of wisdom or encouragement to Kate. These characters were apparently added as an outside voice of reason beyond the world of magic mailboxes, but the script just doesn't do enough with them to warrant their being in the film. We want to see more of Kate and Alex and their eventual getting together, and these tacked on subplots only take away from what truly works in this movie.
This review may skew a bit to the negative, but you know what, The Lake House is not all bad and is actually watchable provided you are willing to check your brain at the door. It's competently made (there are actually a couple of cool hidden split screen effects that make it look like Bullock and Reeves are in the same room, but they're actually in the same place two years apart), it's got a good look that skillfully uses many landmarks of Chicago and the changing seasons, and it has a pair of likeable leads that are only held back by a sometimes underdeveloped screenplay that is too busy glossing over its own plot. You can probably tell by reading this review if The Lake House is right for you or not. I guess the best way to describe my reaction is that I liked it enough while I was watching it, despite the silliness. At least it's not quite the overly sappy big budgeted Lifetime movie that the film's ad campaign made it out to be. But, as far as time travel romance films go, this definitely pales in comparison to the early 80s classic Somewhere in Time. The Lake House is fluffy romantic summer escapism that's good for a date, and nothing more.
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