The Lake House

"2 out of 4 stars"

If you want to watch The Lake House, don't! It was too cheesy for my taste. But people are different. If you like confusing story lines that don't make sense and fall in the category of SciFi/RomCom, like Sweet November, then congratulations! You've found the perfect movie for your weekend! (This was too harsh, it isn't actually that bad).

I take notes before I write a review. If the movie is good, I will watch it till the end and will let it sink in completely and then in a day or two something will come to me and while the words rush out of me I will write them down and then put them in my blog. As I had done with my previous posts in this blog. I kinda don't have another choice, because the movie is so interesting that I can't take my eyes off it and it is so overwhelming that I need to take it in completely before I know what I want to say about it.

But if the movie is not that interesting and I get distracted, I will take notes while watching it (like in this case). So, now I am going to put in some words that I put in while I was watching it! But first I have to give you a brief summary of the plot.

The story starts by showing that a doctor named Kate (Sandra Bullock) is moving out of this lake house and an architect named Alex (Keanu Reeves) moves in. Then Kate puts a letter in the lake house's mailbox asking him to forward her mail to her until the post office delivers her mail to her new address.

And I just realized two gaps here! Doesn't she see there is no one living there?!

Anyway, they found out that there are some things in the letters that don't make sense (like the movie itself!) and realize that Kate is living in 2006 and Alex is in 2004! And it is never explained to us why and how?!!!

Here are my notes (is it obvious that I am not enthused at all?!):

First of all, the acting. It isn't just that it is bad, because it is! But it is also ridiculous! Is it your first time acting or you are just taking acting 101?! It is ridiculous! And it is not just the actors' fault. The cinematography or better to say directing is cheesy too! Like at the beginning of movie when Kate says it's going to be snow storm and Alex acts surprised when it happens. I mean COME ON! You could do better! Christopher Plummer was good as always but some of his lines were also meh! Sandar Bullock was kinda ok too, but just ok!

(You wouldn't believe this but I even get distracted while writing this review!)

And the other thing that I said to myself was why would they do this?! To go on a date with someone who is not there and who they don't know?! And go through all that trouble? Even I am not that miserable!

And while they were reading each others' letters out loud (narrating actually), and the way they kept interrupting each other it was like they were chatting face to face or web chatting! If that was happening while they were both standing by the mail box it would've made sense but the thing was that the scene was some place else and they had the letters in their hands, had took it from the mail box with them to their work or some place else so it just couldn't have been like that. (You'll know what I mean when you watch it. But this is a hint to not to when you see it is this confusing!)

And talking of confusing, most of the time you had to think really hard what had just happened. Most times I was like hah?! And while I was trying to think what just happened (which sometimes even didn't come to an answer), I would miss a scene. And believe me I am sharp! It had almost never took me this much energy (and grey cells!) to get what a movie was about!

Anyway, overall the script was sloppy AND childish, and at times (and these times weren't few!) it just wouldn't make any sense. They would say a line and you would be like "so...what should I do with this useless and irrelevant information?!" I really waited to see if this line was going to help me at some point in the movie but it never did.

I used to buy this magazine back in Iran which was about movies, called "Donya-ye Tassvir", which in my opinion was the best magazine in Iran, and it had this section that a critic named Bijan Ashtari would write about movies and I remember that he always used this sentence while describing scripts such as this one that said "it has holes in it!". So, yeah. This is what it is. It has too many holes in it!

Take this for example:

Would you invite someone that you just met on the street to your girlfriend's party?! (I don't know the norms in the US, but I highly doubt such a thing would happen here.)

Or if somebody's dog was standing next to you would you call after them and say "hey dude, you forgot your dog" or would you just stand there with the dog saying "hey, I know you!" while looking appreciatively at the dog's owner?! It's just creepy!

"The ending was kinda predictable but it was good. I mean it was powerful. Although I had guessed what was going to happen but still it made me emotional. Maybe it was made good. Probably the best part of the movie, I would say! Up until the moment it started narrating! If it had left the contents of the letter for our imagination, which we already knew what was saying, would’ve been enough."

This last paragraph was what I had initially written while I was watching the movie, when BAM! The ending changed and I was like wow this wasn’t what I predicted at all! Although I like unpredictable endings but in this case I preferred the one that I had predicted!

While writing it I was like finally! A positive thing about this movie and then they took it away from me! So it's their fault that I don't have a good thing to write about this movie.

I give this movie 2 stars because it had a good idea and to be frank it wasn't unbearable.They just hadn't put any thought into it before starting to write a screenplay. I'm guessing the writer just had some info about architecture and had just read Jane Austen's Persuasion!

Roger Ebert has given this movie 3.5 stars out of 4. One of the rare movies where we don't see eye to eye! But I always think what you think of a movie usually depends on how you are feeling at that moment. I wasn't feeling bad (!) but I didn't expect that much from this movie from the start. And I believe the plot shouldn't make you confused. Don't get me wrong, I love movies that make you think and get you thinking what's going on but at some point you wanna say AHA! I get it! A moment which this movie lacked!

By the way, I am saving 1 star ratings for movies like Sweet November! :D :p