Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie includes some sad spots where the wannabe romantic partners can't meet for years, only exchange letters. A young man fights with his father, then the father dies, which makes the son cry. A bus accident kills a pedestrian (you hear crash and see prone body afterwards) and upsets a female doctor who's on the scene. Characters drink in bars and at parties. A woman kisses a man who's not her fiancé, who's upset when he catches them.
Families can discuss the idea of falling in love through letters (or online!): what sorts of things do you learn about someone else through writing that you often don't learn face to face? What traits make Kate and Alex appealing to one another, even though they haven't seen each other? How can waiting and patience make relationships, whether romantic or familial, seem more worthwhile?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Evocative and sometimes lovely, THE LAKE HOUSE is all about waiting. While this refers to the central couple -- Kate (Sandra Bullock) and Alex (Keanu Reeves) -- who must wait to meet, it also affects viewers, who must wait for alternately obvious and illogical plot points to be resolved. Occasionally rewarding, this slow movement is sometimes annoying.
At the start of Alejandro Agresti's romance, Kate and Alex exchange letters via a magic mailbox at the titular Chicago area lake house. He's an architect turned contractor (in part to spite his famous architect father, played by stately Christopher Plummer), who has just moved into the house, and she's a doctor who's just moved out. The rub is, he's living in 2004 and she's in 2006. Their letters cross through time, as does a cute dog named Jack, who lives simultaneously in both time, though he also disappears mysteriously: such is the fate of the poor dog assigned to play romantic marker.
As Kate and Alex fall in love, they also realize they are living in different years; more strangely, they accept it, and begin to plot ways to find one another across time. When Alex tracks Kate down in 2004, before she knows he exists, Kate is engaged to the over-controlling Morgan (Dylan Walsh) and wishing she knew someone more like... well, Alex.
Kate tells him she loves Jane Austen's Persuasion (a book that is, she notes, about waiting), they look deeply into one another's eyes and share a camera-swirling kiss. And then: pffft. Though he knows who she is, Alex doesn't pursue Kate, leaving her to be unhappy with Morgan as he is unhappy with himself. Here the structure of the film gets awkward as well, as their letters -- first rendered in pensive voice-overs as they write or wait for letters -- now turns into conversation while they go about their separate, split-screened lives.
Perhaps most disappointing is the movie's feeble use of the wondrous Shohreh Aghdashloo (X-Men:The Last Stand)as Anna, Kate's supervisor. They meet for drinks in a melancholy bar scene (Anna's daughter has left for college, Kate's in love with a man she believes she can't meet). When Anna observes that this mystery man "must write one hell of a letter" to warrant so much mooning, the movie briefly exposes its sense of humor. But his letters ("I'll find a way to be close to you, to take care of you") sound more like a Lifetime movie than Jane Austen.
Families who like this movie should also see Speed, Sweet November, While You Were Sleeping, or Kate and Leopold.
Rate It!
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Sexual Content"Long-distance" romance is mostly chaste (they live two years apart), but grants them two passionate kisses; Kate wears a nightie that shows cleavage. |
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ViolenceA bus hits a car and leaves a pedestrian dead; when Kate tries to help, she's sad when the victim dies. |
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LanguageSeveral uses of "hell," one each of s-word, "For Christ's sake," "godamnit." |
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Social BehaviorCharacters in love are loyal, characters looking for love sometimes hurt others, and a father-son relationship is tense (mutual anger). |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoCharacters drink wine and beer a couple of times, liquor and champagne in social/party settings. |
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