A few days ago we watched the movie The Lake House; a romantic rematch between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Keanu got top billing (probably due to pay) even though the movie was much more a story of Sandra's character, and she did a much better job. That's just my opinion, though.

In all it was a pleasant story with fair acting. Bullock far exceeded Reeves, but she always has, even in their first pairing in Speed, as well as all of their separate projects.

We got the film from Netflix, which was a good level on which to see it; if you happen upon it on television or even want something cute to rent, it's a fairly safe bet. There is a little time-travel involved, but it's not in a sci-fi way at all, which will either please you or disappoint you, depending on your desire for sci-fi.

It's a little love story about some characters who are out of sync; about two years out of sync. We start meeting Kate Forster (Bullock) as she's moving out of a glass house built in stilts over a lake. Shortly we meet Alex Wyler (Reeves) as he arrives at the house, where we see it in a quite dilapidated state, giving the impression that some time has passed. We see, as he soon discovers, that the mailbox has its flag up, and on inspection he finds the note Bullock left as she exited; a request to forward mail. He believes the letter's author to be in error, as he understands the house has been empty for some time. Curiously he puts the response in the mailbox instead of sending it to the address in the note.

Bullock returns to the house after a tough day as a doctor in a busy Chicago hospital. She checks the mailbox and finds a letter in response to hers, notes she is not in error about the house in question, and points out the author incorrectly dated the letter. She also drops her note in the mailbox.

The film is largely one of pen-pals, kind of in the vein of You've Got Mail, except we quickly learn that the participants are a couple of years off. It quickly becomes apparent that although we were introduced to him later, that Reeves is actually occupying the house two years previous.

We follow the characters through correspondence via series of visits to the mailbox. The banter includes a series of experiments where the characters figure out the time differential. The writing and reading of the letters played out as camera trickery with the characters speaking their letters to the ether, as we see them "nearby" participating in the conversation.

At points in the film, Reeves runs into Bullock, knowing her to be unaware of their relationship, as she won't be participating in it for two years.

A few misrepresentations of a space-time continuum happen. In one case, Reeves responds to a comment Bullock makes about missing the trees at the lake house by planting one of them outside of her apartment building, which in his time is under construction. Jump ahead to her standing outside of her building in a rain storm and suddenly a tree appears, conveniently shielding her from the rain. Then at a later point, another person looks curiously at the tree as if he realized it had magically appeared (although he was not there during the rain storm). If we were to buy into the letter trading passing through some mailbox time portal, wouldn't it have been the case that even though he planted the tree out of sequence, that her perception would have changed to recognize that the tree would have always been there? The tree did appear to her suddenly as a full-grown tree, and not the sapling he planted.

We suspended our disbelief for the benefit of the story.

They set up a date, two years in the future, so Bullock can meet him on her time, but he fails to show. She takes this as a sign and suspends their relationship, refusing to return to the mailbox. Reeves, however, continues putting letters in the box.

Spoiler follows.

The film ends on a paradox, causing a little groan in our house.

The rough day that Bullock had early in the film, the one that drove her to visit her happy place at the lake house, was due to trying to help a man struck by a bus. He died, making her sad.

It turns out, of course, that this man was Reeves. Very near the end of the film, Bullock learns from his brother that he'd died a couple of years before, and she correctly ties the two incidents together.

She races to the lake house, throws a note in the mailbox warning him not to cross the street, but to instead go to the house, and then she paces frantically waiting.

The paradoxes made us scoff.

Of course, there's the timing of the note; she's well past the point in the day where two years previous he had already been hit by the bus, so it's really too late for him to even receive the note.

If you allow that one, there's the big paradox of what happens to the entire story if she prevents his accident and death? If he doesn't get hit by a bus, then she doesn't return to the lake house to start the adventure and ultimately return to warn him not to get hit by the bus, therefore, he'd get hit by the bus...

Also, after he returns to the lake house (the spoiler is that he does, and the movie abruptly ends), what happens after they get back to the city?

Again, allowing the previous paradox just play out, she's reacquainted and re-engaged to the former boyfriend that she had broken up with due to one of Reeves' earlier encounters. So we allow her to break up again, long-lost love returned.

But his family believes he's dead! Upon return, has time just rearranged itself, like the tree, and everyone is going to just move on like he hadn't died?

That middle paradox is just too big. After brief discussion, we agreed that is probably why the movie ends right then.