Tell me if this sounds at all familiar: a down-on-her-luck doctor falls for a manual labor guy, only to have their romance interrupted by some bizarre twists. "The Lake House" is a movie we´ve all seen many times before and, at the same time, it´s also a movie we´ve never seen prior.
When Alex (Keanu Reeves) moves into a gorgeous house on a lake (hence the name of the movie, "The Lake House"), he begins to correspond with Kate (Sandra Bullock), a doctor who has just moved from the home. She has a simple request, at first: please forward her mail to a new address in Chicago if any should get through the Post Office. He agrees to and, through their letters, the two learn a very eerie truth: they are living roughly two years apart from each other; she is in the year 2006 and he in 2004.
In the course of their correspondence, they slowly learn they have been a part of each other´s lives for quite some time, from kissing at her birthday party to the aforementioned house. Obviously, the dilemma is how can these two people who supposedly love each other make their relationship work when they´ve never seen one another, let alone touched?
"The Lake House" is equal parts romance and science fiction. It´s not science fiction in the vein of "Star Wars" or "Planet of the Apes", but rather in the vein of "Frequency". The sci-fi aspects of the plot are necessary for the story, but they don´t overtake it. However, the sci-fi here is more dubious than anything seen in "Frequency". At least in that movie, the filmmakers tried to rationalize away their sci-fi conceits; here, nobody tries to explain what´s going on. It´s just accepted and never really thought of again.
What is this magic mailbox? Why does it allow these two people from two different times to communicate with each other? And, really, isn´t it true that changing history, whether it be future history or past history, will cause other changes throughout time? (That question was the whole basis for "The Butterfly Effect".)
Nobody bothers to answer, let alone ask those questions. It´s as if talking with someone in another time is commonplace in their reality. We, the audience, know it´s not since many characters express disbelief at what Kate and Alex are going through. That in and of itself is not that major of a stumble. Bigger problems involve the lack of chemistry between Bullock and Reeves and the seemingly obvious lack of logic on the parts of the two leads.
Both of the main actors have been off the Hollywood radar screen for a while. Why they both chose this vehicle as their "comeback" of sorts is beyond me. Reeves, for as much as he tries, isn´t cut out to be a leading romantic man. He still suffers from the "Woah" syndrome he acquired during "The Matrix". And Bullock constantly looks as though she´s trying to figure out the plot while reciting her lines. There´s no pop to their scenes together. Admittedly, there are only a handful of these times; more often than not, they are talking to each other using a split screen rather than being face to face.
It is surprising that both of these actors headed the action film "Speed" more than a couple years ago and kept that entire endeavor afloat, basically, on their own. Why they couldn´t buoy this feature is beyond me. There seems to be a directing message to both indicating they need to be as down and expressionless as possible. Even in what is supposed to be one of the most emotional scenes in the movie (the death of Alex´s father…which Kate does try to warn him about; more on that in a second), Bullock´s voiceover contains no emotion, sadness, hurt or empathy it needs to. It´s as if she´s reading a letter.
Come to think of it, that´s exactly what she´s doing and, on that count, the direction works wonderfully. When reading a letter (or e-mail in this day and age), you never can be entirely sure of a person´s emotion. So, since she is merely saying what Alex is reading, it might be understandable for the voice over to be emotionless. Logical or not, I still don´t like it.
As for that plot point about Alex´s father (Christopher Plummer) dying, one has to wonder what world these two people live in. Neither of them does the smart thing, which would have been doing an internet search for the other. They have full names and an address to work with. Google it, Yahoo it…heck, even go look at public records. Of course, doing so would have ended the story before it got going.
Had Kate done that, she would have seen when the father died and, for that matter, what Alex´s fate would be. I don´t mind alluding to what it is because, in a movie like this, there are limited possibilities. Which brings us back to the inevitable and unenviable task of trying to make sense of temporal paradoxes.
Don´t bother. You´ll run yourself ragged trying to make sense of what we´re given here. In some respects, the subplots are more interesting than the main story: Kate moving to a Chicago hospital, Alex and his family and so on.
Using a mailbox as a time travel device is a unique idea, akin to the use of a telephone booth on "Dr. Who". But I have to wonder: isn´t there a mailman who opens that mailbox on a regular basis? Doesn´t this person see the letters or put mail in and, thus, move the flag on the box? It´s called logic, folks.
Also falling under this heading is why Kate would travel from Chicago to the house in order to exchange letters with Alex. From what I understand, this is a long journey. There is evidence to back that assumption. She moves into the city to take a job in Chicago City Hospital. If it wasn´t that long a trip, wouldn´t she have stayed at the lake house if she loved it so much? She isn´t willing to live there anymore, but freely runs there to drop a letter in the mailbox to a man in her past?
As a romance, "The Lake House" fails. As a science fiction movie, it also fails. Too bad, there was actual potential here.