film | Postal disservice

I'll say this for THE LAKE HOUSE: It's pure schmaltz, but at least it doesn't even pretend to be anything imbued with grit, substance or verisimilitude. A mopey parallel-reality romance between an architect (Keanu Reeves) from 2004 and an ER doc (Sandra Bullock) who lives in 2006 — a magic mailbox (how Blue's Clues-ian!) enables them to soothe each other's loneliness by sending letters across the space-time continuum or whatever — how much you dig the film'll hinge on your ability to stomach a cornball premise that features dialogue like: "The truth is, man from the past, not much has changed in 2006." And later, after Reeves scopes out Bullock in '04 and starts getting fresh with her '06 self via correspondence, prep your chunder bucket.

Him: "You never told me how beautiful you are."
Her: "Well, maybe you saw somebody else."
Him: "Long brown hair. Gentle, unguarded eyes ..."

Barf. But then, what do you really expect from a narrative that's centered around a magic mailbox?

And yet ... you know, it's not awful or unwatchable, which is more of a nod to the simpatico appeal of Reeves and Bullock than the maudlin lure of the Hallmark-movie-of-the-week story. They clicked in Speed 12 years ago, and they're a nice couple here, especially in the one scene director Alejandro Agresti and writer David Auburn — reworking the Korean film Il Mare — let them interact in person. Comfortable within his mellow range, Reeves makes an effective puppy-dog suitor (though he should never fake-sneeze again), while Bullock is surprisingly convincing at shaking off her chick-flick perk and immersing herself in an ocean of glum. They sure are cute at sad-sackery, but the mechanics of their relationship are too clumsy and wooden — after Reeves '04 sets up a dinner date in '06, then inexplicably doesn't show, Bullock angrily rebuffs him instead of, y'know, logically using hospital resources to see if he's dead in '06 or something — to raise The Lake House to the level of saccharine wonderment it aims for. (Also, I think there's a huge plot hole involving Reeves' location in a key beginning moment, but pondering it gives me a migraine.) The bottom line, I suppose, is that The Lake House is probably as good as a magic-mailbox movie can be, which is, unfortunately, not very. C