Loser Movies Is Back!

It took long enough, but I finally saw The Lake House today. I’m doing my taxes and saw it on-demand on HBO so I fired it up. Actually, I started to watch it last night but I fell asleep watching it. But finished it this morning.

So here’s the report!

As you might know, it concerns this titular Lake House. It’s one of these fancy artsy glass houses on a lake, actually up on stilts too. And Sandra Bullock used to live there, but now Keanu Reeves lives there. She leaves him a note with instructions for forwarding mail. Only here’s the kicker kids, two of the instructions don’t make sense. First, it says, “Forgive the paw prints in the front” but there are no paw prints! Whoa. And it also says that it’s 2006 when in fact, it is 2004. Yowza. What’s a guy to do?

Well, he writes her back and tells her that’s just dead wrong. But then as it happens, a dog runs through some paint while he’s working on the little walkway in front and gets PAW PRINTS there. Did you just get chills? Because I did.

So he writes her back and they gradually realize wait a second, we actually do live two years apart from each other. This is told through an excruciating montage of letters and voice over and them reading aloud their letters as well. They try to figure out ways to intersect their lives outside of the magical mailbox.

They have some chance encounters where they meet but the other doesn’t realize that it’s the mailbox guy or gal at the time. This is where the plot starts to not make a lot of sense. Even if you buy the whole mailbox dealie bobber. There’s just a lot of time travel paradoxes that are hard to follow.

Ok, first off—she complains about no trees or missing trees so Keanu plants a tree at the housing development where she is at. Which then by the time she lives there becomes a big tree. Like in a split second.

So you see, he can effect things in the future, but she can tell him what happened in the past. Now, here’s something that I’ll give to the writers. They set up some things that happen and you don’t really think about it but then later it all starts to come together in a dramatic fashion. I’m once again going to assume you aren’t going to watch this movie and thus ruin it for you if you do.

In the beginning of the movie, Sandra sees some guy get run over by a bus. She’s a doctor so she tries to go save him. But he’s dead. Later on, they are supposed to meet for dinner someplace but he doesn’t show up. The reason? Because it’s the SAME DAY FOLKS! Did you just get chills? Because I did. So seriously though, that’s pretty slick. Because he’s the guy that got hit by the bus. Double yowza. And the whole time before she realizes this, she gets pissed at him and breaks it off(through the mailbox) with Keanu. Talk about unfair fighting folks. Aren’t you not allowed to bring up things in the past? Plus, she’s getting mad at him because he didn’t show up. But there’s a pretty good excuse, he’s dead! Geez Louise. Girls are such ball busters.

But I don’t understand when it’s all said and done why this mailbox is magical. I mean, I suppose maybe the mailbox knew they were supposed to be together? And until that was cemented the mailbox was unhappy. Also, you’ve probably realized this movie should not be called the Lake House. It should be called the Mailbox. And you know what? It wasn’t half-bad. It wasn’t great. But it was better than expected. So I give the Lake House(aka The Mailbox) a C+. I feel like there was a missed plotpoint where maybe Sandra’s guy(she has a boyfriend of course that makes it harder for Keanu to get with her at first) runs over the mailbox or hits it with a baseball bat. Just a suggestion directors from the future if you are remaking the movie and reading this blog. Through the magical internet that lets us send messages back and forth two years apart.