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| Yo Homes, smell ya later. |
Here's a five word review: Tyler Perry's The Lake House.
I could go on, but I really hit the nail on the head with that last line.
A busy workaholic career girl (Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Tatyana Ali) comes home for the holidays to help nurse her aging father back to health. While in town she runs into a gaggle of old flames, all the while receiving mysterious letters from a Secret Santa. The small pool of potential admirers is cut in half when two are (predictably) revealed to be a gay couple. There, that's about it, from here on out it's literally just The Lake House.
Bill Cobbs, as the cantankerous elderly father, is great as always (watching him yell at a yuppie white couple trying to buy his house was one the highlights of my viewing experience). Ernie Hudson pops up as the local pastor, and Jordan Sparks as the best friend - they shoehorn in a half-assed living room musical number for her right before the credits roll. Lamorne Morris (of New Girl fame), who snagged leading man status on this one, is woefully underused. The man is hilarious and they didn't give him a single joke. Fucking idiotic. But his presence throughout is appreciated nonetheless.
Touched By An Angel's Della Reese has an incomprehensible scene as a professor... or scientist... (or maybe a novelist / paranormal specialist?) where she lays the groundwork for the film's contextualization of the time rift that allows the (spoiler alert) now deceased Morris to communicate with the still alive Ali. They do it through letters, and a magicked-up (and/or wormholed) mailbox. Sound familiar?
I will say, they pull out all the stops with the Christmas mysticism on this one - not only is the mailbox timeportal in play, it's arguably second fiddle to the granddaddy of magic outdoor objects - the venerable old wishing well. Ali hypothetically sets the whole wormhole-letter-service off by tossing a potent coin down the backyard well - easily the best special effects shot I've seen in any of these movies, a bit of a mashup between some of the Lost hatch-shots and some LOTR ring-shots. Later, another even more stored-up magic energy penny (taken from the dead boyfriend's sketchbook, where he patiently saved it for an important wish after getting it from a pre-teen Ali ...who was about to the toss it in the very same well!!!) manages to save poor Morris from his untimely vehicular death.
Passing thought: So many of these flicks have characters who are artists or want to be artists, or dropped out of art school, or whose parents wouldn't let them be artists - it's an insanely high percentage, we'll have to do a tally at the end of the season. I don't know what the connection is, but it must be something about letting an audience with unfulfilled dreams see their onscreen surrogate's dreams come to fruition, or helping them tap into their childhood with overly broad occupational descriptions like "Artist" (before you knew what a CPA was, or heard the term "middle management," or "visual merchandiser" to borrow a line from Window Wonderland). Maybe it's just hack writing and everyone's too lazy to come up with a job that connotes whimsy as easily as "Artist" does. Or everyone who writes and produces holiday made-for-tv movies was an art school drop out or an art-world pariah who couldn't walk the walk and had to pay some bills. Life is mysterious.
NSM - Non-Santa Movie
ECM - Extreme Christmas Mysticism
DW/M - Dead Wife / Mother
DLI - Dead Love Interest
Mind the timeslips,
- Jon Bobby Elf
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