The Lake House

The Lake House

Directed by Alejandro Agresti

Written By David Auburn, based on Siworae (or Il Mare) by Eun-Jeong Kim and Ji-na Yeo

Warner Bros.

Normally, I like to review the movies everyone wants to see--this weekend, it's going to be Nacho Libre and the third Fast and the Furious (which, by the way, makes director Justin Lin the first member of the 2006 2-movie club after his earlier Annapolis). But circumstances are enough different here in New York--namely my parking situation at work is a pain in the ass.

In Nashville, if I wanted to see three movies, then by God, I saw three movies. Here, I've got to take my car out of a parking garage, pay a fee, and then work through some red tape to get my car parked for free just outside the theatre, for I work at a mall that has security lined all over the place. I've done it before, but it's just a pain. After I got done with The Lake House, Nacho Libre was being shown in a special Thursday night sneak, and other employees were in the middle of The Fast and the Furious 3.

But The Lake House should be no slouch this weekend, it'll probably do what all romances do in the opening frame, which is about $20 million. So, while it's not the movie I'd like to necessarily review for blog purposes, there should be some interest.

Here in 2006, almost nothing surprises us anymore. We've seen The Sixth Sense and Frequency. On a different note, we've seen You've Got Mail or perhaps the basis for that movie, The Shop Around the Corner. This movie sort of combines all of those into one, and you very well might see the surprise coming ten miles away like I did. I don't want to give you the impression that the movie's surprise is necessarily The Sixth Sense, but the era in which we live in now on surprise endings clues us into what will probably happen.

In the reunion of Speed stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, a woman named Kate (Bulluck) sends letters to her former lake house to the current resident, Alex Wyler (Reeves). Wyler is confused at her letters concerning her knowledge of the house, because it doesn't look like it's been lived in for years. Back and forth they go until finally there's the moment "something weird is going on here," and they believe the impossible is happening--which is that Kate is two years ahead of Alex. And so, the movie swirls around their lives, she a doctor with an off-an-on-again boyfriend (Dylan Walsh) and he a contractor with father issues (daddy played by Christopher Plummer), but meanwhile, there's this strange fantasy that they play out and can't seem to make it a reality.

The movie is not concerned on telling you the why or how, so it just is. This decision is usually made when the filmmakers realize that any explanation they give you for the concept of the story will probably be unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation just makes this another middle-of-the-road boy meets girl, loses girl, wins girl back kind of story, with a little twist to make it all appear different. It's not a bad movie by any stretch, certainly not great, better than your usual date flick, but coming up so short. And remember the Keanu rule--Keanu can be great fun when cast in a role like Speed or The Matrix or his small turn in Thumbsucker. But give him a role with even a shadow of weight and he comes off looking foolish most of the time. Sandra Bulluck has always been likeable, but outside of Crash, where her screen time is limited, she's never seemed to take off to the point that her name means a good movie.