Cinematography beautifies film
By Patricia Ho
The new film Life as a House gets off to a good start with Vilmos Zsigmond's excellent photography, but soon descends into contrived scenes, cheesy dialogue and a threadbare story line. In a bid to be gutsy and eccentric, central character George Monroe (Kevin Klein) dramatically destroys numerous architectural models after being dismissed from his job.
After this display, he collapses on the street and is brought to a hospital where we learn that he has "not been touched in 10 years," and also that he has only four months to live, due to an untreatable terminal illness. Loaded with less than subtle symbolism, he decides to use the remainder of his life to rebuild the house his abusive father left him, and in the process rebuild his relationship with his estranged son from a failed marriage.
His son Sam is a typical goth kid who hates everyone and wants to die. Forcibly recruited by his dad to tear down and rebuild a house, he is bitter and angry. The confrontations between Sam and George make for some terrribly labored sentimentality. In no time Sam is opening up to his dad and revealing intimate and profound thoughts such as "I like how it feels not to feel." Ex-wife Robin (Kristen Scott Thomas) is also inexplicably drawn to George and his project (later a policeman and a pimp also pitch in). Various pairing ups of main characters then occur.
As the plot has been blatantly predictable for a while now, the movie depends on the characters to keep it moving. Unfortunately, character development is also poorly done, and despite decent acting, George would have had to die earlier to keep the movie from lagging.
As it is, the movie is very feebly propped up by the frilly escapades of its characters. Quirky little sexual deviancies of no real value to the story are added in an attempt to make the movie edgy and less conventional. Life as a House strives at times to portray alternative, non-Brady-Bunch-type relationships that still can be rewarding, but rather than genuinely pursuing that theme, what we get are characters and relationships that are merely conventionally unconventional.
Sentimentality is not necessarily bad, but rather than a warm fuzzy feeling, a sense of artificiality dominates this movie. Although aesthetically well done, the most endearing character in the movie is the golden retriever and director/producer Irwin Winkler may as well have had "cry here" in large-type running across the screen during scenes in which tugging of heart strings was intended. D