Keanu Reeves traverses the gap from Hollywood pretty-boy to puffy middle-aged guy in his new film The Lake House. And while his former Speed co-star, Sandra Bullock, manages to still retain some of the charm from her youth, the vehicle by which these two re-team is a tame and uneventful movie.
Basically the Lake House is about a man who exchanges letters with the occupant of his house who happens to live two years in the future. There is no exchange of lotto numbers or stock market tips so that both can cash in and live the life of emperors in the future. No, these schmucks squander all of their space-time randomness sending mushy letters back and forth. The characters are apparently socially retarded in one form or another because they both have trouble interacting with people during their own time frame. Sandra Bullock is a physician and a very beautiful woman who spends her birthday at a bar drinking chardonnay by herself. Keanu, on the other hand, has daddy-issues that the audience has little time to invest in before they are resolved.
But the plot mechanics are not as big a deal as a gigantic time-space paradox that leaves the movie ineffectual and frankly, entirely lame. I just have to spoil the fuck out of this:
The basic plot of the movie hinges on an event early in the film. Sandra Bullock leaves the titular Lake House because she was just renting while in medical school. She takes a job at a hospital in Chicago and when she leaves the house, she drops a note in the mailbox for the new tenant with her mail-forward info. Now during her first week of work on the job, she is lunching with her mom when a man is run down on the street in front of her, and he dies. This death is what prompts Bullock’s character to return to the Lake House (or at least the property). Okay, you can easily guess, as will everyone who sees this movie, that the dead guy she tried to save is Keanu, the guy that starts corresponding with her when he goes back to the Lake House. But here’s the crucial misstep: Because of Bullock’s interference, Keanu never dies. So why would she be so sad that she would go back to the lake house and begin her relationship with the characters. But instead of any correspondence being wiped from her memory and his, she runs back to the mail box to wait for her man. And they live happily ever after.
How? The film clearly establishes proper rules for a movie about people who poke around in the timeline. If things change in the past, they change in the future. Well unless you consider that each change in the past would fracture the universe into millions of pieces. But the subsequent multi-verse theory is probably a little over the heads of dimwitted house wives who would actually be entertained by this type of movie.
The movie is not without its merits. Keanu and Sandy still manage some chemistry in the little screen time they have together, and a few of the letters and situations swerve between the nearly unbearably sweet to the vaguely funny. One particular passage has Sandra Bullock responding to Keanu who asks what life is like two years in the future, as if much has changed. But despite a reasonable effort from everyone involved, the movie just doesn’t stick, and the message in this day and age is wasted on an audience of woman who should be taking a more vested interest in their lives and loves.
You see, the resounding theme of the film is that love is worth waiting for. So is the lottery, ladies. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. My advice to the Sandra Bullocks of the world: stop daydreaming and get out once in a while. Go to a bar or club. Join a bowling league or book club. Whatever you do, though, do not go and see the Lake House.
