An uneasy mix of Ghost and The Sixth Sense, The Lake House seems to exist solely for the commercial reason of reuniting Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock for the first time since Speed. But while that was a successful action picture that took $300m around the world in box office takings alone, their latest effort is a rather pedestrian and sometimes clumsy romance that will be lucky to take a quarter of that.
Argentinian director Alejandro Aresti made a good impression with his lyrical Valentin a couple of years ago, the story of a young boy who seeks out his mother. Here he is under the Hollywood thumb however, and while he does attempt to give the film a style of its own, he gets bogged down with a plot that may well leave most viewers scratching their heads.
It's a love across the ages film, with Bullock and Reeves playing a doctor and construction worker respectively. Both of them occupy the same house - a beautiful, isolated glass structure - but, and here's the catch, both of them believe they are living there in the present. For Reeves, now is 2004, but for Bullock it's 2006. The two begin to communicate in an unexplained way by letters and ghost-like talking.
At one point Reeves' character asks Bullock what life is like in 2006. At no point does he ask something a little more obvious, such as who won the 2005 Superbowl. He roots around for clues in an attic that clearly has walls, yet from the outside his house is clearly all made of glass. The two spend the large majority of the film apart, until another unexplained circumstance leads to an inevitable climax.
There's some pointless back story involving Reeves' brother and father (Christopher Plummer), but the best that can be said about The Lake House is that it is inoffensive, with no swearing, nudity or guns. But a little more action and pace, let alone some explaining of how we are meant to believe any of this, would be more than welcome.
Paul Hurley
