THE LAKE HOUSE Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Warner Bros./ Village Roadshow
Grade: C-
Directed by: Alejandro Agresti
Written by: David Auburn, from motion pic "Il Mare"
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Plummer,
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Screened at: AMC Empire 25, NYC, 6/17/06
Opens: June 16, 2006 Epistolary dramas, that is entertainments that consist largely of lovers exchanging letters, are more effectively a subject for the stage than the screen. Broadly speaking, stage plays stress sharp dialogue while films require physical action. How much physical action can you have when most of the story involves the exchange of letters? (For those of us addicted to cell phones, those are the things that you write on paper with a pen.) Alejandro Agresti tries to solve the problem, using David Auburn’s adaptation of the South Korean pic “Il Mare.” He simply has time moving in fast motion. A guy sends a letter to his woman and, instead of taking two or three days to wind its way through the Chicago postal system, the envelope is received almost instantly. Letters are delivered to the woman’s rural mailbox without the need for a postman, which is automation run wild and the dream of every postmaster general interested in saving labor costs. Paradoxically, while the notes are exchanged with the speed of light, the film itself is sl.......ow. Not that slow is always bad, but when you have a tale like this one where logic takes a two-year holiday, you may just not scrape together an audience patient enough to stand the drivel. Featuring Sandra Bullock, celebrated for her comic roles but this time in the guise of a doctor (Kate Forster) with yearnings, “The Lake House” wants us to think that her would-be lover, Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) is stuck in a time warp. When it’s 2006 in Kate’s Chicago, it’s 2004 in Wylers. How did this happen? Not only Wyler is two years behind the rest of us–just think of the all improvements in computers and cell phones he has to wait for patiently. Is there anyone in the audience who does not want to shout out, “Hey, Kate, give up the romantic slop and tell the guy who won the Kentucky Derby in 2005 and while you’re at it, to buy up as much Google stock as you can afford!” But no: the good doctor has grown to love her letter-writer even though he never asks, “Can I call you some time?” The story finds Kate as she’s moving to a more central location from her Chicago digs in a house overlooking Lake Michigan while Alex Wyler moves his stuff in. He finds a note on Kate’s desk asking the future tenant to forward her mail to her new urban setting. As they begin to correspond to each other, Kate reminds Alex that his letters are incorrectly dated: 2004 instead of 2006. The letters are received as though by magic, the red flag atop the box automatically going up or down as the letters arrive. Ultimately some crises develops. Kate has been seeing Morgan (Dylan Walsh), a peas-and-carrots type who is drawing good pay as a lawyer while Alex is concerned about his deteriorating relationship with his dad, Simon Wyler (Christopher Plummer), a major architect who built the lake house with his own hands. Here is yet another epistolary movie that would work better on the stage, slimmed down quite a bit, eliminating the broad strokes that find a woman in an unexciting relationship with her lawyer boyfriend and a man trying to establish better rapport with his dad. The entire production is phlegmatic, with uninspired dialogue–surprising for the fellow who run the Pulitzer for his play, “Proof.” Bullock is glum almost throughout the tale, while Reeves shows the pain of his unrequited love with a poker-face. Rated PG-13. 97 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
