The Lake House (2006)

No plot description as I have not seen The Lake House. It doesn't come out until next Friday, but I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

I'm going to tell you that . . . I hate The Lake House. I hate it. Every time I see a TV spot, which contains all I need to know about this monstrosity, I get worked up and yell at the TV.

Forget the fact I neither buy Keanu Reeves as an architect nor Sandra Bullock as a doctor (well, maybe a pediatrician. Is she a pediatrician in this movie?). Forget the fact that, because I am evil, I spent unaccounted-for minutes giggling at the sight of scores of publicity photos of Keanu Reeves sitting around reading letters and Sandra Bullock looking out the window looking pensive/sad, although I guarantee that those two things make up, like, 67% of the movie.

It's the following line that gets me every time: "We're living two years apart."

And Bullock sounds so horrified and sad at the prospect that you would think that she, a lady doctor, just found out that she has prostate cancer.

Because, seriously, if you are both that in love and are aware of this problem, then what is the big deal? Just have him meet up with you at the lake house at some future time after you have already fallen in love and get together in real life. And, you know, run through the obits from the last two years and make sure he doesn't die between now and then. See? Easy-peasy.

I mean, I saw one crappy-ass made-for-TV movie where the couple-in-love exchanging letters lived in the 1860s and the 1990s respectively, so there. That's way harder to reconcile and may have involved killing oneself and time travel. I don't think I watched the end.

So what I'm saying is thus: I know that romances are predictable, but I really shouldn't have been able to a) figure it all out during a commercial and b) come to a solution during that time. Seriously, took me 15-30 seconds, and now the industry wants me to spend ten Jack Trippers and one hundred-odd minutes suffering through more? No.

And, while we're here, Alison Gillmor asks, Whither the rom-com?