Like "You've Got Mail" But Worse

I just watched The Lake House, that time-travel, letter-writing romance from earlier this year starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. (See the stars of Speed reunited on screen! Seriously, that was part of the advertising.)

Watching the movie, I kept thinking about how similar it was to that Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan reunion flick, You've Got Mail. That movie, which was also just a feature-length advertisement for the then-cutting-edge AOL, also featured two main characters writing to each other and slowly falling in love through the wit and warmth of the written word. And little do they know that their real lives, off the page (or monitor screen, such as it was), keep intersecting in moments of chance where they *almost* figure it all out, but the moments pass and their mysterious romantic courtship goes on. And on. And on. This part of the formula is best represented by that truly terrible waste of John Cusack, Serendipity. That movie's only redeeming value was seeing and laughing at John Corbett play a totally ridiculous New Age musician.

As my long-time pals know, I am NOT a member of the Tom Hanks fan club, so I am certainly no fan of You've Got Mail. (I prefer Meg Ryan paired up with Billy Crystal, not the Hanks.) Part of my problem with YGM was that Tom Hanks figures out who Meg is first and so he has the upper hand for much of the relationship, and he's kinda a big corporate smarmy jerk. The Lake House also sets up this imbalance in the relationship, since Keanu is able to figure things out and find Sandra long before she knows what's really happening. I still don't like the imbalance, although Keanu's character is blandly likable enough.

But, The Lake House takes the formula and tries to bend it around a Mobius Strip by making it a time warp love story. Eh? Yes, Keanu and Sandra are writing to each other and falling in love 2 years apart. How???? Don't ask. It doesn't make sense. And there are LOTS of holes in this story. I can't imagine what Stephen Hawking's review of this movie would be, cuz it surely doesn't seem to be representing the time-space continuum accurately. But perhaps that's expecting too much from a formulaic romantic drama.

There's not much character development (oh, she was sad when her dad died! he clashed with his own father!) but I admit I'm glad to see that Keanu has finally shed that whole "Whoa, dude!" demeanor and now seems to be an actual adult. It suits him. And I've always liked Sandy B, even when she's in total crap. (Like that horrible movie with Hugh Grant a few years back.)

But still, the appeal of the 2 stars wasn't enough to make this a good movie. It was okay to waste away a few hours on a Friday afternoon, but I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater. I've never seen the original movie in this genre - The Shop Around the Corner - so perhaps I should have rented that instead.