I had reservations about watching Life as a House (2001) but Tivo recorded it and I wanted a distraction this afternoon. Not much to the story and it’s all very obvious, especially the connections between the physical and the spiritual/emotional. Well acted and nicely shot and directed.
George Monroe (Kevin Kline) is sick of his job making architectural models but that’s okay because, as the film opens, his boss fires him after 20 years with no notice. As he leaves the office building, he collapses and is taken to the hospital where he tells a friendly nurse that no one loves him or touches him. At the same time, his son Sam (Hayden Christensen, Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars) makes a pathetic attempt to hang himself and when his remarried mother Robin Kimball (Kristin Scott Thomas) dashes up to see what made the crashing noise finds out, she hardly registers an emotion before turning away. The divorce was ten years ago. In other words, everyone’s dead on the inside already and would be more or less happy if the outside died as well.
But it’s not time for that. George decides to use his few remaining months (cancer) to tear down a piece of crap house he inherited from his own unloving dad and force Sam to spend summer vacation helping him build a replacement. A few days of pouting and stealing Dad’s Vicodin, then a ‘friendly’ non-sexual shower with next door neighbor hottie Alyssa (Jena Malone, who will make an amazing temptress in some movie five years from now) is all Sam needs to start growing up.
Sam starts pitching in and, boy, is that last bit of tearing down the old shack cathartic! Surprising no one, not only does Robin realize she still loves George, Alyssa and Sam get together (crowding out her pimping, drugdealing, spoiled boyfriend), then, just as George is dying, after he’s finally told his ex and son, even Robin’s current (dead on the inside) husband catches the spark and the two begin to makeup. Face it, the story is treacle, trite, predictable. Somehow I wasn’t surprised in the least to find out that the script was by the same person, Mark Andrus, who wrote Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood–a man! As Rotten Tomatoes summed Life as a House up: manipulative tearjerker.
Mildly recommended for the quality of acting
BillSaysThis 