A perfect storm of good intentions gone wrong, The Lake House is a love-story-with-a-mystic-hook featuring dubious chemistry between its romantic leads, and a writer-director team (Proof scripter David Auburn and Valentin's Alejandro Agresti) who gussy up conventional melodrama with high-minded, vaguely artsy flourishes. Some will probably be tempted to describe this as a metaphysical romance, but it feels more like metaphysics for mush-heads.
With its tale of two people trying to forge a love connection across parallel planes of reality (they live in separate times, see), The Lake House comes off a little like Ghost, albeit a paler shade of that movie, and without even the redeeming kitsch. Keanu Reeves plays a sensitive architect whose destiny appears linked with a woman he's never met (Sandra Bullock) who apparently lives in a future two years ahead of him, in 2006. It seems that the two have, at separate times, rented the same, titular dwelling, and they soon become enthusiastic pen pals courtesy of the house's apparently magical mail box (the opening and closing of which provides several moments of misfired humor).
The movie slogs along towards its inevitable romantic collision, with director Agresti employing all sorts of corny and/or contrived techniques to show us Reeves and Bullock communicating across time, and screenwriter Auburn throwing in a handful of forgettable secondary characters to distract us (a distant father for Keanu, an imperfect boyfriend for Sandra). Along the way, much attention is lavished upon an adorable dog that both characters seem to own in different times, a soundtrack alternately hip (Nick Drake, Paolo Conte) and nostalgic (Paul McCartney, Carole King), and lethargic montages of Reeves and Bullock engaged in various activities while their voice-overs profess their increasing and eventually undying love for one another. Movies like this often hinge on some sort of "surprise" ending, and you'll probably have the one featured in The Lake House figured out within the first 20 minutes. Stars Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Plummer, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashhloo and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
The Lake House (PG-13) opens June 16 at local theaters. 2 stars
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.