It’s time for a film that goes out of its way to shatter its own message time and time again. I suppose it is always harder to follow advice than it is to state it and that’s what happens to the main heroine here. At the end of the day the plot has to be held together by both main characters making the biggest mistakes possible at every turn but that’s how it goes sometimes. It may be very dramatic but I would say this is not a particularly good movie.

The movie starts with Kate leaving her Lake House and alerting the new tenant to make sure he sends any leftover mail to her. She is now working hard at a hospital trying to save lives but it gets off to a rocky start when someone is hit by a car/truck and dies right in front of her. She is not having a good day but then gets an odd message from the tenant. It turns out that their mail is reaching each other from 2 years apart. He is actually the previous tenant from 2 years ago. Their messages are floating across time and both are so desperate that they fall in love with each other through the pen pal system. How can they possibly meet up to express their feelings?

This won’t be easy. Sure it’s only 2 years and it’s not like she moves far enough away but they’d have to ask for each other’s phone number, names, etc. In a lot of ways it will be easier for Kate since she is in the future so she should be able to look him up with minimal effort. She doesn’t though because the film would be over basically immediately. For Alex it’ll be slightly tougher since she doesn’t know him yet but perhaps with his charm he can win her over too. Instead he just loses touch right away. Are they just really bad at this pen pal stuff?

This is yet another film that falls into the tragic trap of being better if they were just friends. It would be a really wholesome film if they could both just be encouraging each other the whole time. Alex would give her tips on getting through her current struggles at the hospital and maybe Kate would help him patch things up with his father. Instead going with the romance angle hurts both characters massively and I’ll get into that now.

Kate reveals that she really loves a book about two people always meeting up at the wrong time and the message is about patience. Waiting for the right person instead of rushing things. The book had a sad ending but she will be ready to wait and find the right man. Okay so now she potentially has Alex and just needs to find a way to meet up with him. Instead she loses confidence in him and immediately runs into the arms of Morgan who has been chasing after her for quite a while. She basically decides to settle for him instead of staying alone with seems like an absolute waste. Why would you possibly settle when the whole point of the book is to not do that?

Another problem is how quick it all was. She basically rejects Alex and then runs straight into Morgan’s arms. This isn’t someone who is serious relationship material. I’d also argue that Morgan should have higher standards for himself. They already broke up once in the past because she cheated on him (It turns out that she was with Alex at that time) and he is still content to be with her when she has no remorse? When he brings this up, she immediately gets defensive and gaslights the life out of the guy. She makes it sound like Morgan is being petty and should have gotten over being cheated on which is absolutely crazy.

So we’re definitely on a really bad start with both of these characters. I couldn’t support Morgan at all here but I can’t supposed Kate either since she is way too emotional. She feels like the kind of character who will revenge cheat or have a fling if she gets bored. That’s what happened last time after all. Meanwhile for Alex, he is moving a bit fast here. For starters he does initiate the cheating when he knew Kate already had a boyfriend. Not a very ethical position to take.

Then Kate gives him the silent treatment after one plan goes bad which seems incredibly immature. There should also be some pretty big implications if he couldn’t make it in two years. They should have explored those options together instead of Kate deciding that she needed a man right away. As you can see I wasn’t too sympathetic to her plight.

The whole climax also revolves around Alex not being able to track her down for basically 2 years which is really crazy. Given that the film didn’t seem to deserve the “happy” ending that it got, I actually think the should have had her fail the mission. Have the film end with her waiting as the credits start to roll. You could also argue that this is an open ending and perhaps that means he would be around soon. I just don’t see why he would be willing to listen after such a long amount of time.

Also he just didn’t answer for two years while waiting to surprise her after 2 years? The time travel definitely does have some issues which is probably a byproduct of thinking up such a unique premise. I do think it’s a really cool idea but turning it into a romance feels like it was a mistake. This film would work so much better with the friendship angle because then most of my issues would not end up applying.

My only other applicable issue would just be that Alex’s subplot with his father seems rather shoehorned in. It didn’t have a whole lot of payoff and felt like filler in the movie. I didn’t think it had a noticeable impact on any of the characters’ development so if you cut it than nothing changes. Giving that a bigger role could have fixed that issue but then you’d have less time for the rest. So I’d probably have just substituted that for some more letters. Reading out the letters is probably the highlight of the film after all as it’s fun to keep jumping from place to place in the two eras.

Overall, The Lake House is definitely an emotional film. I think you’ll have a good time for the most part as the concept is explored fairly thoroughly. You’ll just see more and more of the cracks as the romance gets serious and the whole thing falls over by the end. This film absolutely needed better characters and I also have to suspend disbelief big time on the characters falling in love with each other. Through letters? That just seems really crazy to me. The writing is good and I hope more films try a premise like this. They just need to try and stick to the theme. If the characters are big on waiting then have them wait and not jump into a crazy relationship after one setback. That’s still the wildest part of the whole movie.

Overall 4/10