The Lake House

I saw Keanu Reeves' and Sandra Bullock's first collaboration since Speed this weekend and, I'll admit it right upfront, I cried. For those of you who haven't read the reviews or seen the previews, the movie is about two people who fall in love even though one is living in 2004 and one in 2006 and the absurd, beautiful, impractical, titular house on the lake that brings them together.

Yes, as the Washington Post points out rather forcefully, the time-travel(?) plot made absolutely no sense, even internally. And if you're going to be nit-picky about it, don't bother going. Even I, who was ready and willing to be swept away, kept pausing to go, "Really?? Huh." but the good acting and realistic (yes, I said realistic) characterization let me be caught up again in the hopeless romance of two lonely souls separated by circumstance and waiting for time to bring them together. (The Jane Austen novel Persuasion was a major plot device.) It was so sweet and romantic, and, people, there was a stray dog that unites them! Tell me you're immune to that you stone-hearted cynics.

Like The Break Up, which I also liked, The Lake House was partly set in Chicago, one of the best looking cities in the US, and the city itself played a substantial supporting role. As I adore looking at Chicago on film, and think Sandra Bullock is my absolute favorite prickly romantic lead, take whatever grains of salt with this post you need to before deciding to see this movie. But I really liked it.