Seeing The Lake House

My friends and I went to see The Lake House after church yesterday. The theater was packed, about 90% women and the tiny minority of men whose reason for coming was to carry the drinks and snacks into the theater for their wives. Definitely a chick flick.

But this movie took the story into territory that chick flicks normally don't go. This one played with time. And playing with time presents a challenge to storytellers that can never quite be resolved.

Whether or not the viewer cares about the lack of total resolution is the mark of a good storyteller (or a good movie). The movies, Timecop and Back to the Future had an identical ending (the hero returns to a better "present" time), but I never noticed the glaring question in Back to the Future until after I saw Timecop and that same glaring question jumped out at me: What happened to the hero who lived and remembered all the events in the new, better "present"?

Back to the Future is the better movie, because I didn't care about the details.

Which brings me back to The Lake House.

As soon as the end credits came up, an older woman in the row behind us said, "That's the dumbest movie I've ever seen."

I replied, "No, it's not."

There were five women in our group, and we were split 3 - 2 in favor of it, and I had just as much fun after the movie debating it as I did watching it.

You know how it's going to end, just by watching the commercials for it on TV. What you don't know is how they'll manage to get there. Still, one friend (who didn't like it--this is the same friend who loves Frequency--go figure) said, "But they didn't tell you at the end what happened!"

I replied, "They lived happily ever after. That's all that matters!"

Here's my recommendation:

If you're the type of person who watches movies by letting them just happen, without trying really hard to figure things out, and you like chick flicks, by all means go see this movie. I loved it.

If you're not much for the whole "rifts in the space-time continuum" concept, or if you're disappointed when you can figure things out before the end, go see something else.