Film lacks continuity, common sense

Somehow, several critics have found a way to dance around the fact that director Alejandro Agresti’s new film “The Lake House” just doesn’t work.

Some claim the chemistry between stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves is enough to keep the film afloat, while others have, for whatever reason, turned a blind eye to the plot’s complete and utter disregard for coherency — or just plain management of time and place.

The simple task of outlining the film’s premise seems simple enough: Kate Forster (Bullock) is at the end of her stay at the architectural wonder known in the film as the Lake House. Raised above a pristine body of water just outside the city limits of Chicago, the house, built with all glass walls, once belonged to famous architect Simon Wyler (Christopher Plummer) — who had coffee with Frank Lloyd Wright — and years later his son and fellow architect Alex (Reeves).

Kate plans to shake up her life as a doctor with a new job at a much more prestigious hospital in downtown Chicago, leaving her serenity for an urban apartment. On her way out, she leaves a letter in the mail box for the next owner asking to forward any mail that may slip past her change of address.

Already being familiar with the whole two-years-apart idea established by the plethora of previews, it’s merely a matter of waiting for Alex and Kate to realize this mystical time warp they’re writing through.

Time travel itself is a fair enough premise. Plenty of films have played with the concept of two people manipulating the past and the future. And audiences can, at least for a moment, forget that time travel is proven impossible. But the holes left by impossibility have to be filled with plausibility.

For instance, as Alex and Kate both come to realize, they have actually met before. At a party her former boyfriend threw for her birthday two years prior, Alex was there. Yet Kate can’t seem to remember what Alex looked like.

It’s a problem writer David Auburn (“Proof”) attempts to solve with a simple plot filler — a story about Kate’s first boyfriend, a young guitar player of 16. But, get this, she can’t even remember what he looks like either.

And with that said, Auburn and Agresti are now justified to kill Alex in an accident, an accident that Kate just happens to witness, and she administers aid to the man (Alex) who has been hit by a bus. Yes, I gave away the ending, but when the audience is supposed to gasp with the realization that it was Alex who was killed and Kate must race in 2008 to get a letter to Alex in hopes he won’t get hit by the bus back in 2006, I just rolled my eyes in disbelief.

There are a few technical aspects of the film that are worth noting — an interesting camera shot here, a well-placed wipe or cut there. Yet it all seems a bit too showy — almost as if Agresti is saying, “I am a good director, I just don’t know what to do with this script.”

The plot is deeper than just Alex and Kate, exploring the deaths of Alex’s distanced father and Alex’s inability to chase his dream of starting his own architectural firm. Metaphors abound between architecture and life, while Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” ties together Kate and Alex’s mistimed love.

But despite the pluses, which are few and far between, “The Lake House” is so void of a foundation that it crumbles when struck by a the slightest gust of wind called reason.

Grade: D+