If Oprah had a movie club, Life as a House would be a must-see. It has all the elements of one of her book picks--contrived laughs, silly animals, teary-eyed women, troubled teens, etc. The only thing about this movie that deserves four stars is its shamelessness in trying to turn on your water-works.
Kevin Klein plays George, a man recently told he has four months to live. Let the tears begin. Kristin Scott-Thomas is his ex-wife who is stuck in a lousy second marriage. Let the tears dribble. Hayden Christensen plays Klein's angst-ridden, heavily pierced son who is as uplifting as an obituary. Let the tears stream.
Like any other man who has four months to live, Klein decides to use his life-savings to tear down his old house and then construct a new home. As Klein builds the new home, he takes the broken lives of his ex-wife and son and attempts to tear down and then fix the mistakes and troubles they have lived through. This may be the most obvious metaphor in the history of modern cinema.
This lousy comparison is not the only problem with Mark Andrus' (As Good As It Gets) featherweight script. All of the humorous moments in the movie come across as trite or tired. The actors, especially Klein, try to act their way around the words, but every time they come close to a meaningful, heartfelt moment, director Irwin Winkler finds a way to reel them back in--back to the shmaltz.
Winkler knows a good movie--he's produced classics like Goodfellas, Raging Bull and Rocky. The man just cannot direct a movie to save his life--his last effort was Sandra Bullock's am-I-an-action-movie-or-am-I-a-piece-of-meaningful-social-commentary The Net. Life as a House meanders between emotional drama and social commentary to the point that it accomplishes neither. The film will make you cry, but only because it is doing the cinematic version of cutting an onion in front of your nose.
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