I wrote this some time ago while procrastinating for NaNoWriMo.
I watched The Lake House for the first time tonight. The beginning is a little rough, both characters jump into a romantic relationship a little too quickly to be believable. The pacing was at times too fast-seeming to fast forward their relationship, but at other times too slow. I was sometimes bored and started reading Buzzfeed listicles, something I rarely do when watching a movie. With a run time of 1 hour and 39 minutes an additional 10 minutes building up the relationship before things got serious wouldn’t have been amiss. For example, move the walk around Chicago and the tree planting to later in the film. And precede it with some cute fluffy bits. It took a lot of time and effort to plan the walk and it seems weird that he would put that much effort into it having hardly known her. The same thing holds true with the tree planting. It seems like too much effort for where the relationship is. Add more “prove you're in the future” bits that don’t require so much effort and leave these symbolic gestures for later.
But Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were selling it. Pretty soon I’m wrapped up in the plot and rooting for them to get together. For me, character always trumps plot. The fact that they want to be together makes me want them to be together.
And now, my favorite parts, in no particular order:
Keanu Reeves sits by me at my surprise birthday party (that I didn’t want) and starts talking about Jane Austen? Yes, please. (Although I found their conversation about Persuasion to be off the mark, I could see where they were going with it for the context of the movie.) And then they dance under the stars!? And then they kiss!? And then it probably causes her to break up with Morgan or whatever his name was. Perfect.
And then he gets back together with his brother to form their own architecture company! Yay! Bro bonding time!
And then he realizes that he knows where she is on Valentine’s Day from an old letter and he rushes away and the audience knows he’s about to get hit by a bus! And she rushes to stop him! And he’s on the curb! And he waits. And she’s waiting to see if he meets her at the mailbox and he does!!! And I don’t know what happened to Morgan, but they probably broke up again. Good riddance-he was the worst.
But despite my hand waving at plot points, if he never got hit by the bus, she never wrote about him getting hit by the bus, so he wouldn’t have known that she was there in order to try to go meet her, so if she never wrote him not to meet her at the plaza-she also didn’t tell him to meet her at the lake house. I hate time travel.
The preceding 487 words are brought to you by National Novel Writing Month.
Comments