'The Lake House'

A A A Comments By Mark Holcomb Tuesday, Jun 6 2006

photo: Warner Bros.

Lake effect: Bullock and Reeves

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The Lake House
Directed by Alejandro Agresti
Warner Bros, opens June 16

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Treading the same supernatural turf trampled by Somewhere in Time and Frequency, director Alejandro Agresti's gooey, ostensibly spooky romance yarn The Lake House flounders less on its thudding familiarity than on its mood- killing dourness. Watching it is like being force-fed cotton candy laced with Xanax (or vice versa). A remake of the 2000 South Korean film Siworae, Lake House tracks two mopey Chicago professionals (Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves) who separately yet simultaneously inhabit a pomo suburban eyesore in two distinct years. They develop a mutual letch via perky missives and a mystical mailbox, and conspire to bridge the temporal gap. Crackpot Twilight Zone hook and persistent gloom notwithstanding, Agresti's film offers a few satisfactorily weepy scenes and an uncharacteristically loose performance from Reeves (Bullock just seems irked), but it succeeds best as a metaphor for the relationship woes of indecisive urbanites. With their impossible-to-fill expectations and utter self-centeredness, these mokes should be giddy over landing in a relationship committed only to the intangibl.e.