The Lake House

Lake House, The

“The Lake House” is a fantasy romance drama. I usually stay away from romances, except if someone cool, like Gerard Butler in “P.S. I Love You” or, in this case Keanu Reeves, stars in it. The good thing about it is that it has a perfect running time for a romance – around and hour and a half, just so you won’t get bored with it.

It’s 2006. Kate moves out of her lake house, and leaves a letter for the next tenant to forward her mail if any gets there by mistake. The new tenant, Alex, replies. Little by little, although they’ve never met, Alex and Kate fall in love. The only problem is that Alex is in the year 2004.

I have to be honest, I was expecting more of a spooky film, so to say. But “The Lake House” is primarily a romance drama, then a fantasy. Fortunately, it’s not too romantic, if you know what I mean. Keanu once again stars with Sandra Bullock, both of them deliver good performances.

Overall, the film is OK. It’s really not my genre, and I’ve seen it only because of my new little film quest – to see all the major works of Keanu, otherwise I would’ve most likely passed it. But, if you like romances, you should really enjoy it.

Rating: 7/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft

Recommendations:

Last updated: 2010-07-14 08:03:51 by CoolAwesomeDuo

The Lake House (2006) Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Plummer

This movie is an absolute must for romantics and those who can enjoy make-believe and the whimsy of time-travel.

The Lake House is a slow-moving, slow-paced, sweet movie about two people who fall in love. The trouble is that they cannot connect because one lives two years in the future and one lives two years in the past. Only their mailboxes and Jack, the dog, unite them. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are Alex Wyler and Dr. Kate Forster in this adult fairytale. Bullock was recently seen in the award winning movie Crash. She was also in Miss Congeniality (2000), Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and fabulous (2005), and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

When Kate moves out of an unusual and isolated glass house on a lake, she leaves a note for the next tenant. In the note, she mentions a dog and his footprints. Architect/real estate developer Alex finds the note, but is puzzled because he knows for sure that there was no recent previous tenant. Remember he is living in 2004, so she has not been to the house yet. He responds to Kate to explain that there has been no tenant in the glass house. Curiously, he does find doggy footprints. Thus begins the “once upon a time” story of Kate and Alex.

Actor Christopher Plummer seems to be showing up everywhere in film these days (Inside Man 2006 and Must Love Dogs). In The Lake House, he is Simon Wyler, Alex’s cold, authoritative and famous architect father (he is the one who built the glass house), who does not understand why his talented son is building suburban tract houses.

Romantics will understand this movie, others may pick the premise apart, the years are 2004 (his) and 2006 (hers), why snail-mail in this age of e-mail? Alex does not seem to care about politics or anything else concerning the future, at one point does ask how things are in the future, Kate simply responds that not much has changed. Surely he would be curious to know who is president now, the price of gas, something. Perhaps the fact that they are living two years apart is problematic enough. Alex and Kate do have other love interests, but now they only have 'eyes' for each other as they fall hopelessly and helplessly in love. They continue writing and they rush to their mailboxes to await replies. At one point their love becomes more complicated and hurtful when they discover that their physical paths have crossed. Fortunately, each of them has a confidante to whom they finally and hesitatingly reveal their unique love affair. Caution, The Lake House is for romantics only.

The Lake House [Blu-ray] is available from Amazon.com.

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Vannie Ryanes, <br />
Classic Film Maven

Last updated: 2010-05-05 07:25:45 by user07

The Lake House

What if you fall in love to someone whom you never met and the two of you lived two years apart? Would you still hold on? And think that someday you will met and feel the love for each other? There's a saying that if you love the person, you can wait. If it's true love, love will find the way. This is what happen to the love story of Kate Foster a doctor and Alex Wyler an architect who is the new owner of the lake house in this very touching story of love separate by time The Lake House.

The Lake House is a story of two person exchanging letter in different time with two years gap. They lived in the same house but at different time.

In 2006 Kate leaves the house together with his dog named Jack. She leaves a letter for the next tenant of the lake house at the mail box. But the letter is found by the owner two years before she leaves. They exchange letter until they found out, that they have different dates on the letter. Jack remember that he already met Kate before. Kate was still have a boyfriend at that time. The reason why the dog is with Kate it's because Jack gave his dog and the key of the lake house to Kate's ex-boyfriend because Alex wanted to live the lake house.

Kate and Alex planned to met in year 2006 of Valentines Day, but it didn't happened because Alex was hit by a car on that day. So, Kate rushes to the Lake House with her car and she writes a letter and put it on the mail box. On her letter she said to Alex not to come on Valentines Day on 2006 and don't cross the street but instead wait for another two years to meet on Valentines Day at the Lake house, and she will wait there.

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Movie Review : The Lake House
The story is two confusing because of different time of setting but the directors do it well which let the viewers understand the whole story little by little. The story was too impossible but deliver a good love story that tells that love can wait. In this romantic movie, love is possible even you haven't meet the person and you can wait even it requires many years just to see him.

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Last updated: 2010-03-29 07:50:25 by user07

The Lake House

Senses of logic defied. Senses of warmth and charm ensured.

The Gist

Sandra Bullock leaves her lake house and moves on to another residence. She leaves a mail in the mailbox for the next tenant requesting for future mails to be forwarded to her new address. The new tenant, Keanu Reeves reads the mail and replies to her. An ongoing series of correspondence ensues. What is so special about the story? Her mails are dated 2006 whereas his is 2004. Logic? Where?

The only common connection between the two of them is the mailbox at the lake house and a female dog named Jack. The mailbox acts as the time traveling mechanism so simple that it puts Robert Zemeckis’ flux capacitor’s complexity down to shame.

This is also a remake of the popular Korean production Il Mare.

What do I Think?

Let’s put logic aside and enjoy the premise of the movie as though it is possible. I have always liked romance movies about two characters that are brought together by fate, namely Turn Left, Turn Right (Hong Kong), Serendipity and Sleepless in Seattle. Besides having fate as the main theme, viewers will always know (spoilers ahead!) that the two characters are only going to have a happily-ever-after meeting towards the end of the movie.

Keanu Reeves reunites with his Speed co-star Sandra Bullock. Reeves is really one tree of an actor; his acting is so wooden that he has developed it into a form of art. His expressions of anger, happiness, sadness, jealousy, pain, sickness, love and whatever are very, very interchangeable. There was a scene which I swore I couldn’t tell whether he was sneezing profusely from flu or just laughing with ridiculously huge amounts of joy. Following the flow of the story, I think he was crying due to sadness. Watching his movies now gives me a chore to explore the possibilities of his portrayed emotions. Anyhow, I cannot deny is screen presence, which is magnetic, attracting viewers to stay and watch till the end. He is highly watchable.

Sandra Bullock refrains from her usual annoying persona but thankfully she is not entirely cast against type. In most of her scenes, I could feel that she is just ready to burst into her usual magnitudes of annoyingness. She barely just does OK for her part. Funnily, I keep looking at her nose, lips and chin whenever she appears. They kept reminding me of Michael Jackson's.

The screenplay is genuinely full of charm. I did not manage to catch the original Il Mare but the screenwriters have put together many scenes that would put little tweaks in your hearts. These sorts of scenes are only possible with the time logic defied premise. For example, when she tells him she misses some particular tree and the next day it appears in front of her condo because he planted it for her two years ago. Another one is where he sprays some graffiti on the wall that she is going to pass by to tell her of his gratitude. Since they are communicating via mails from the mailbox, and not face to face, the screenwriters have also devised various ingenious and imaginative ways to display their ‘conversations’.

Story wise, it had a slower than usual pacing. I feel that the writers were just trying to drag the movie with minor parallel stories in order to delay the (spoilers ahead!) union of the two main characters. Some of them are totally irrelevant and boring.

The music selected for the movie is notable and makes me want to buy the soundtrack after watching it. The trailer had Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” but it’s not in the movie at all. The movie gave us something better: a hidden gem from Paul McCartney’s Grammy nominated “Chaos and Creation in The Backyard” album called “This Never Happened Before.” That old Beatle still has that touch in him.

Rating:
7/10: I always have this soft spot for fate and time traveling themed movies.

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Last updated: 2009-08-11 21:57:24 by joekhor