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April 18, 2007

The Lake House

Reeves and Bullock are at it again!

By Ben

Armed with pens, paper, an irresponsible utter disregard for the integrity of the space time continuum, and a magic mailbox, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock embark on another romantic adventure (if you could call Speed that...) in the film The Lake House. This time, instead of being stuck within the confines of a speeding bus they're stuck two years apart. Using the mailbox outside of the lake house that they occupied at different points in time, they're able to send letters back forth and strike up a relationship. Reeves plays an architect turned project manager on a construction site and Bullock is a doctor. Both are pretty unbelievable in a film chock full of unbelievable occurances.

Unbelievable coincidences, sappy storylines, and magical mailboxes should come as no surprise in a remake of a Korean film. Korea is infamous for its melodramas and romances, a phenomenon that some sociologists have thought is a reaction to Korea's dark history in the latter half of the 1900s. I saw bits of the original film, Il Mare, once one my mom was watching it so when trailers for this film started showing up on TV I knew immediately what it was. I wondered why they hell anyone felt it was necessary to remake that movie and watching The Lake House (twice!) did little to answer my numerous questions.

The story is largely told through goofy scenes of the daily lives of both characters with the letters that they're writing back and forth being read. There are even scenes where a split screen is utilized as both characters are in the same place two years apart, reading eachother's letters but unable to be together. In the voiceovers that accompany much of the film, Bullock's acting is passable but Reeves' sounds even more confused than he usually does. The viewer might share in his confusion too as the story jumps back and forth through time and one catches up with the other in one time frame but is still receiving letters back in the other and all hell breaks loose. The film is weird and it's frustrating expending any amount of brain power on a film that offers so little in terms of rewards.

The one reward that there is in the film is the lake house itself. Constructed largely of glass, the house has a large tree growing inside it with a fancy roof that opens up to let the tree get some sunlight. However, the questionable level of privacy offered by a glass house and the lack of any sort of sewage system (according to IMDB) makes this superficially beautiful lake house just as unappealing as the film it inhabits.

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