Don't you just hate it when you're liking a movie, enjoying its measured rhythms and nuances, and then a ridiculous final act ruins the entire experience?

So it is with The Glass House, a fairly entertaining thriller-melodrama that's undercut by its weak climax and laughably stupid -- and cliched -- ending.

The movie tells the story of teenaged Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and her kid brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan), whose parents are killed in a car crash. The two kids are then sent to live with family friends Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgard and Diane Lane) in -- natch -- their big glass mansion.

At first, everything seems to go well, despite the fact that Ruby and Rhett have to share the same room. The Glasses entertain Rhett with video game systems, and Ruby begins easing into her new home and school.

But little by little, Ruby begins to suspect that the Glasses aren't the great guardians they appear to be. It turns out that the increasingly creepy Terry -- who enjoys looking at Ruby's chest, personally buckling her seatbelt and driving really fast -- owes a lot of money to some shady tough-guy types. And, coincidentally, Ruby and Rhett are set to inherit their parents' $4 million nest egg. Is there a connection? Does Sobieski look like Helen Hunt?

Oddly, for a purported thriller, the film never really gets going until about an hour in. But the editing is brisk, and first-time feature film director Daniel Sackheim's ability to stage some interesting shots keeps you from squirming too much. The film features a good cast, which includes a supporting turn by Bruce Dern as a concerned lawyer.

But the movie can't get around one of its biggest flaws: The banality of the villains' motivations. The Glass House would have been far better served if the parents were actually psychopathic wingnuts, like the wacked antagonists in such movies as The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Single White Female. Too bad, then, that Terry is just a guy who owes a lot of money to loan sharks and Erin is just a moody drug addict. And too bad about that stupid, horror-movie ending.

Otherwise, The Glass House would have been one of those trashy, guilty pleasures. Instead, it's pretty forgettable. (More on: The Glass House)

(This film is rated PG-13)

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