It's kind of a long-distance relationship

You guys should thank me, you know. In order to make Are You Gene Hackman? a better, more rounded compendium of opinions and news, I sometimes subject myself to absolute shite, in the name of research. Granted, as I write this, I am not watching The Devil Wears Prada with my sister and girlfriend – gotta have some standards – but the other night, we caught The Lake House. Behind Snakes on a Plane, this is perhaps the summer’s most ri-goodam-diculous major release. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock play unlikable people who live in the same house, but two years apart. They start exchanging letters, and then in a hilarious You’ve Got Mail style manner, go from hating each other, to loving each other.

Of course, the film is pretty rubbish. There’s plenty of clunky dialogue about how, doubtless anticipating the audience’s reaction, neither understands the situation regarding the year: “Everyone knows it’s 2004!” and all that. It’s written by a Pulitzer Prize winner, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense, follows any of Newton’s laws of the universe, is cogent, etc. There’s a really awkward and ultimately useless subplot about Keanu’s dad. There’s a rival love interest who has no personality. Fortunately, there is a bus, so in one way, there’s something else in common with Speed. Keanu’s “huh?” face was the prototype for Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel. Like in American Dreamz, Shohreh Agadashloo is the best thing in a horrible film. It wasn’t even so bad that it became good in a kitsch way. The ending was daft, the beginning wasn’t much better, and damn, even with five minutes left, it felt like two hundred.