Stuff by Steve

Synopsis: A massive cruise ship capsizes, and a motley band of survivors must climb to the “bottom” of the boat to escape.

It can’t be said enough: disaster movies rock. With the notable exception of “Atomic Twister” (hey, I do have some standards), I have rarely met a disaster movie that I didn’t like. I think of them like a woman thinks of a Harlequin Romance novel: cheap, fluffy entertainment that goes down easy and leaves you feeling good about yourself for about two seconds. It’s like candy. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I usually enjoy watching disaster movies, even if they are bad. The key is that they have to be the good kind of bad. How do you know what’s good-bad and what’s bad-bad? Allow me to illustrate this with some points about the movie, followed by some counterpoints about films that I did not care for. Good-bad is when the movie characters show no personal growth whatsoever throughout the course of the movie, but somehow you like them anyway. Bad-bad is when the characters are so flat the actors may as well have been cardboard cut-outs (”Catwoman”). Good-bad is when the movie starts fast and ends fast, leaving zero room for plot, but you still feel like you just went on one heck of a ride. Bad-bad is when you are so bored that you want to gnaw off the arm that is holding your wife’s hand, just so you can go to the bathroom and weep (”The Break Up”). Good-bad is when you frequently wonder how the director of “Das Boot” could stoop to make such a cheap and thoughtless film, but you watch the credits roll while smiling and wondering if your wife would object to you buying the DVD. Bad-bad is when you have a sick, desperate feeling in the pit of your stomach as you leave the theatre wondering how you could possibly get those two hours of your life back (”The Brothers Grimm”). From a purely critical perspective, “Poseidon” was a lame duck (go rent the original 1972 version, “The Poseidon Adventure,” for good film-making), but it was equally interesting, exciting, and most importantly, entertaining.

Synopsis: Two people exchange letters through a mailbox of a unique lake house. The twist: they are living two years apart.

Movies about time travel are a modern day Siren’s call; irresistibly appealing, but will ultimately lead to destruction. They always start out with the alluring promise of great philosophical depth; what if you could relive a past haunting mistake, or visit the future to learn what how your current life choices are going to work out? Would you change anything? The problem is that time travel just doesn’t make sense. If you change something in the past, does it change the present? How? Are you still the same person? Is anyone else? What about your memory of your past that is now different? Do you get new memories? Does anyone else? And if things are changing, exactly how much should they change? Would it always end up being an improvement? As movies go, these questions frequently and shamefully go unanswered.

On the rare occasion you get a well-written story that holds up at first glance (”Back to the Future”), but usually all you end up with is a mess (”Lost in Space”). Regardless, the questions always linger - it’s just that the good movies make you forget the questions in the first place. You see, lacking the strength to withstand logical scrutiny, a movie that incorporates time travel must resort to other devices to survive. “The Lake House” attempted to do just that simply using distorted time as a vehicle through which to deliver a timeless story of heartbreak and love.

The story here was about patience; waiting for something you want, even if (or, perhaps, because) it is the most important thing in the world to you. Well, patience and passionate love. Anyway, patience being the theme, time travel seemed to be the natural storytelling tool. What better way to express the drama in waiting than to separate things, not by space or distance, but by time. By the way, I liked the lesson to be learned. Temperance, and even a bit of faith, were played out to be ultimately beneficial, which was a welcome message to hear.

Thankfully, as I mentioned earlier, the time travel element (and, just to be clear, I don’t mean that Keanu Reeves built a time machine; I am simply implying that the two main characters were able to communicate with each other, despite being separated by two years) was somewhat downplayed. There was no moment where the guy tries to convince the girl to tell him who won the World Series in 2005 so that he could bet on it and become unnaturally rich. Having said that, few directors could resist taking the opportunity to play with the audience’s mind, and this was no exception, with a few minor changes being made in the past that magically altered the present. Nevertheless, the emphasis of the story remained centered on the emotional passion of impossible love.

There were some great moments in the film, like the way the director simulated a conversation by having the two main characters read each other’s letters in the same café or on adjacent park benches; it reminded me of what I like about stage theatre. I also felt that the characters had a significant amount of depth; even the supporting characters felt solid and seemed to play a greater role than mere support.

The acting was actually not too bad (you may notice my aghast surprise). Sandra Bullock dropped her quirky tomboy motif and took on somewhat of a Meg Ryan feminine charm. Keanu Reeves seemed to become more handsome with the addition of a double chin (I’m calling it the Nicolas Cage effect, where a man looks more distinguished the older he gets), although he was as inarticulate as ever. On the upside, I’m certain I saw more than two expressions on his face, which is a dramatic improvement (pardon the pun) over any of his recent other work. Still, that’s not saying much, and he remains one of those Canadian exports I am completely fine with leaving down south. I was extremely pleased to see Christopher Plummer who, despite the humanly-flawed character he played, is a consistently brilliant actor.

Another nice touch I appreciated was the treatment of the architectural interests of Keanu Reeves’ character. The director did a good job of conveying his passion for design in a way that you also came to appreciate and even understand it. I found myself wishing for more beauty shots of local buildings, but I am also glad there wasn’t, as that would have become very distracting from the main point of the film.

So, why the low rating? It all comes back to the plot. If you take away the quirky gimmick about the two lovebirds using an enchanted mailbox to communicate through time, all you end up with is a corny-at-times romance story starring a pretty good female lead and a really bad male one. And since the gimmick wasn’t strong to begin with, that’s really how the movie played out. Once I got used to the weird space/time-paradox-in-a-box, I started asking myself how things were possible; finding no satisfactory answer, I tried ignoring the gimmick altogether, only to find that there was not much else there.

I hate to harp on the point, but these six-minute reviews are my movie-philosophy soapboxes. I challenge you to find one movie that involves time travel (or, simply, the ability to alter the past to affect the present) that doesn’t leave you with a myriad of conflicting and ultimately unanswered questions. Go on. I’ll get you started. “Frequency.” Good, yes. Makes sense in the end, no. “The Time Machine?” No. “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home?” No. Even “The Butterfly Effect” did an pretty good job of trying to explain how it all worked, but no. The best I can think of is “Kate & Leopold.” It fell short right at the end by implying that you could both change time and not change it. Some of these were even good movies, but they were good in spite of their subject matter, even when their subject matter was their raison d’être.

Scientists can’t even agree on what effect time travel would have, even if it were possible, so it is a significant stretch to expect that any Hollywood scriptwriter will be able to explain it any better. This is simply a subject that should not be touched. Ultimately, when one part of your story is weak, it can all appear weak. There are better ways to hook your audience, especially with a heart-rending romance such as this one, and most of them make way more sense.