Hungry's Movie Reviews: The Lake House

I caught The Lake House last night on one of Yangzhou's online movie database. I think currently it's one of the most watched movies, esp under the Romance category.

I normally wouldn't watch mushy stuff as much as I would comedy but I'm curious how they're going to lay-out the story of a romantic correspondence that had transcended time through the help of a magic mailbox and a female dog named Jack.

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*Warning: To those who had watched this, I invite you to come and take a peek and help me assess the movie by leaving comments. To those who haven't watched it yet, hmm... I suggest you leave this page and come back after you have.
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One of the thoughts I had after watching it is: Why did they name the movie The Lake House when its the mailbox who's doing all the work?! Life can really be so unfair even to a rusty trusty mailbox.

Sure, sure the lake house is a serenely isolated perfectly surrounded by nature, a place where you can be yourself. But all it's Mr. Mailbox who's been transporting all these letters and notes. It's like an actress or an executive who has her assistant do all the dirty nasty stuff, but in the end gets the credit. (I hope the creators of Lake House are reading this. Someday when they decide to do an excruciating follow-up movie for this, they should give due credit.)

A thought going through my mind while watching the film is that Alex Wiler (Reeves) must've had a more difficult time than Kate Forrester (Bullock). I mean, he has to wait for Kate for 2 years before she finally catches on with this serenade. While Kate can just go on with her time, as we've seen with the Almario scene. Alex had to wait 2 years for that date, counting the days before the big date, before the first formal meeting.

Kate, on the otherhand, just wakes up the next day, goes to work, comes back home, freshens up, and goes to the restaurant. No agonizing wait.

But then again I thought, "He had seen her once on the tracks, knew what she looks like, kissed her on her birthday. So why didn't he just court her then (meaning 2004) and there? I would've made their lives easier. She returned his kiss so obviously there's chemistry. They could've worked it from there. No more ghost (literally) letters."

Man, if my friends were here, they would've replied, "What can you do? Director's orders!"

Yeah, ok, setting aside my over-sympathy for the mailbox and the then-and-there thing, the really major thing that's been gnawing in my thoughts is that when Alex appeared after her last letter, where she provided him a preview on the life-and-death scene that could change both of their lives, and other lives as well, forever.

Now, I just have to inject something here, and Back to the Future watchers can relate with me: isn't influencing the past affect majorly the outcomes in the future?

So Kate (Bullock) had intercepted, told Alex to wait so they can be together in the future. So by saving his life through a letter, she changed his destiny, her destiny, their destinies... and if you're going to analyze it more, others' destinies as well. And by influencing other people's (who are closely related to them) destiny, they are influencing more people's destinies. It's like a ripple effect.

However, if you come to think about it, what brought Kate back to the lake house in the first place is for her to get away from coping with her first death, which coincindentally is her yet-unknown Alex.

So if he hadn't died then, she wouldn't have needed to go back to the lake house and checked the mailbox, containing Alex's first letter to her. The correspondence wouldn't have occured. Feelings wouldn't have ignited. He wouldn't have left the lake house. He wouldn't have redesigned and reconstructed the lake house for her. The lake house wouldn't have been that beautiful. Kate wouldn't have loved it. Or in another pov, Alex wouldn't have left it for her. He would've raised his own family in the lake house like his dad did. He wouldn't have longed for Kate. He wouldn't have met that terrible accident. So on and so forth...

Like I said from the unseen (Alex's) letter, a lot of things would've spunned. Like for one, Kate might've met some other guy and didn't settle for Nip/Tuck dude (forgot his screen name). Or Alex would've made it real big with or without his brother. He might've successfully carried his subdivision project and married the bimbo, had kids.

Just like what the professor had taught Marty in Back to the Future, affecting one teeny tiny detail in the past could produced a butterfly effect changing his future. Same here with The Lake House. It should've so, but again hearing my friends' reply:

Director's orders!