A magical mailbox allows the lovers to communicate in the romantic melodrama The Lake House.
Kate Forester (Sandra Bullock) is a lonely career-driven Chicago doctor. When she leaves the remote and ethereal glass lake house that was her home during her internship, she leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant.
Architect Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) discovers the note, but is confused by Kate's reference to painted paw prints on the wooden sidewalk.
They simply don't exist.
That is until Alex begins painting the sidewalk and a scruffy mutt steps in his paint tray and tracks some down the walk.
A quick exchange of notes and Alex discovers he's living in 2004 while Kate is living in 2006.
If you buy into the time- warp premise, The Lake House is as unapologetically romantic as it is wildly improbable.
It recalls classic time-travel love stories such as 1948's Portrait of Jenny and 1980's Somewhere in Time, but unfortunately it's neither as compelling or sweepingly sentimental as either.
The problem lies with whoever insisted Bullock and Reeves be so dour and melancholy.
Of course, they're upset that they can't actually meet, but they need to be more enthusiastic and obsessed with their strange affair.
They keep telling friends and family members and each other how much they mean to each other, but we don't see it in the performances.
They just keep moping around, whether it's Bullock's wistful stares or Reeves' pouting. They just don't inspire the audience to be swept up in the plight of these lovers who must find a way to make time work for them.
That is a shame for numerous reasons.
Bullock was much better at conveying thwarted love in Hope Floats as was Reeves in A Walk in the Clouds.
Screenwriter David Auburn, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of his own time-warp drama Proof, has written leaden dialogue and Argentine director Alejandro Agresti, who showed such a deft hand at handling sentiment in his 2002 flick Valentin, doesn't give the film enough magic.
At times, The Lake House gets too real and that's not what we want, because then plot twists get confusing and tricky.
Kate tells Alex about a time she met and kissed a stranger at a birthday party her fiance threw for her.
Alex makes certain he's at that party so he can be the one she kisses. It seems much too manipulative.
Auburn has underwritten all the supporting characters, although Agresti wisely entrusted them to such pros as Christopher Plummer, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Dylan Walsh, who struggle to make them more than caricatures.
Alar Kivilo's cinematography is simply stunning, as are Nathan Crowley's designs for the house on the lake and Rachel Portman's haunting score.
They know The Lake House is meant to be so lushly romantic the story can defy logic.
They just forgot to tell Bullock, Reeves, Agresti and, especially, Auburn, who seem to be at odds with the visual tapestry of the film.
(This film is rated PG)
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