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Fantasy wanders far afield in 'The Lake House'

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The Lake House" is the sort of movie you either go with or run from.

I tended toward the former, but those who demand their fantasy movies maintain a certain logic are going to be annoyed as all heck. And anyone not inclined toward the fantastical needn't read another word.

Warner Bros. Pictures

'The Lake House'

C+

The verdict: The sort of wrinkle-in-time romance that'll have you pulling out your handkerchief — or pulling out your hair.

Director: Alejandro Agresti
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Christopher Plummer
Run time: 98 minutes
Release date: June 16, 2006
Rating: PG for some language and a disturbing image.
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Last seen together on a careening bus in "Speed," Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are now sharing a gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright-ish lake house outside Chicago. She's a lonely doctor at a busy downtown hospital. He's a loner architect dismissed by his overly critical, famous-architect father (Christopher Plummer) because he's designing condos instead of, well, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish lake houses.

Their correspondence begins with a note Kate (Bullock) leaves for the next tenant, asking the person to forward her mail to her new address in a Chicago high-rise. On an impulse, Alex (Reeves) checks out the address and finds a huge hole where construction is just beginning on a building due to be completed in 18 months. Hmmm ...

As they try to figure out what's going on, they continue to leave each other notes in the magical mailbox. And they fall in love.

Here's the catch: He's living there in 2004 and she's there in 2006.

Based on a 2000 South Korean film, the movie is a fantasy-romance about a long-distance relationship that exists somewhere in time. The two are exceedingly matter-of-fact about their time-tripping circumstances, and the movie expects you to be, too. Argentinian director Alejandro Agresti ("Valentin") and writer David Auburn ("Proof") don't want you hung up on niggling questions like ... why doesn't she just Google him in 2006 and find out where he is? Or why doesn't one of them call information and get a phone number instead of relying on contrived meetings that never work out?

For the filmmakers, things like that are neither here nor there. Instead, they want you to sink into the film's romantically tinged time slips, to think "Ghost" meets "The Twilight Zone" meets "You've Got Mail." Kate mentions how she misses the trees at the lake house, so Alex plants some, two years earlier, so they'll be there for her to miss. She apologizes for the doggy footprints in front of the entrance, noting she has no idea how they got there, and he says, what footprints, until a stray ambles through some wet paint and puts his paw prints on the walkway. (They share the pooch, too, another unexplained leap of faith.)

Even if you are willing to suspend your disbelief, the film still has some problems. Most notably, Reeves doesn't work very well as a romantic lead. More an amiable lump than anything else, he looks somehow lost without his "Matrix" cool coat and cooler moves.

That, in turn, engenders an unfortunate lack of chemistry between the two. Bullock pretty much bulls her way through, using every ounce of her sheer likability to keep us rooting for her character. But even so, when they finally kiss, it seems more contractual than fated.

You have to admire the movie's courage, its unwavering commitment to a convoluted love story that makes almost no sense and teeters one snicker away from falling apart. But at the same time, you have to wonder who thought this time-warped romance would find a wide audience.