Better than a time-traveling love story staring Keanu Reeves has any right to be
I just saw The Lake House. I actually enjoyed myself. It’s not going on my top 10 list or anything, and Keanu is definitely as stiff as a plastic action figure, but it was rather more interesting than the standard Hollywood romance/drama fare.
Some critics seemed to think that the movie was “convoluted” or “hard to follow”, but it isn’t at all. The big “mystery” wasn’t really much of a mystery.
The thing that made it interesting was the creeping sense of fantasy. You could either take the movie literally (Yes, that mailbox really *does* let you talk to people two years in the future), or interpret it as a big fantasy in the mind of Sandra Bullock’s character – a reading I found to be much more appealing.
“The Lake House” raises an interesting question: if your fantasy lover is better than your real life lover (and why wouldn’t he be? You can give him whatever qualities you want: if you’d like a tall and handsome brooding architect living in your dream home, that’s exactly what you’ll get), should you give the real-life boy a chance or just live in the fantasy?
The other bit of intellectual satisfaction I got from this movie was playing the “I wonder if I can figure out how the writers are going to tie all this up” game. They threw enough curves that I wasn’t entirely sure how it would all end.
One other little complaint: the titular house is fairly nice but they don’t really make enough of it in the film: it’s more of a device to help the plot – it could have played a larger role in the fantasy.
There is a talking mailbox in Blue’s Clues, AND he allows communication between the children at home, and Steve the host!!! WOW!!!
http://canada.kidsdomain.com/craft/cegif/mailbox1.jpg
Unfortunately, you cannot talk to people in the future, but Steve has the ability to jump into pictures and drawings!!
Don’t mind me Ian. A new guy moved in below us. A student from China. For some reason he likes to sing at the top of his lungs (poorly) at 4AM. In Chinese. I think I am sleep deprived…
That’s annoying =(
You could ask him to stop? Or failing that club him over the head with a magic mailbox?
Sometimes I find those “Tennant will make no disturbance after 10 pm” rules to be a bit arbitrary. Personally (and this is because I’m basically living my life on Calgary time right now) I find the people who make noise at 8 am and onwards to be a much more annoying phenomenon.
LAWN MOWING AT 7AM!!!! We get a night of singing dude, people beating the crap out of each other next door, and lawn mowing neighbours in the morning.
They’re doing work on my building. The workers arrive and start gabbing and smoking outside one of my bedroom windows at 6:40am.
Gotta love the smoke coming in the windows too. Did I mention that our new Chinese friend is also a heavy smoker??
Ug. I lived with a smoker for a while when I first moved to Fredericton. She was quite good about it in that she only smoked outside, but even so you could still smell it all the time.
It was weird. We were watching The Life of David Gale the other night and I thought of your post. He was giving a lecture at the beginning and talking about fantasy. Fantasy is only appealing when it is not real or attainable. So how does this movie fit in with that? Hmmm