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I guess it is an interesting concept, to see your life as a house. If you think about it a house has a lot to say. It can be cozy and warm or large and empty. A house can be trendy or bland, it could be relaxing or full of energy. A house can be full of memories good and bad. It can be functional or ugly, but when it comes down to it a house is where you spend your life so it is what you make of it. Life as a House starring Kevin Kline (Wild Wild West) as George is a real tearjerker, so bring plenty of tissues because you will need them. George is an architect that still does his job the old fashion way, by hand, so he is as slow as the line at the DMV. He refused to join the computer age and put his designs on the computer so he was fired but the screwed up shit he is smashes his building models on the way out the door. He is also divorced because he is not a very pleasant man. His 16 year old son Sam (Hayden Christensen) is a drug using, facially pierced, blue haired Marilyn Manson freak that does everything he can to be a pain in the ass. His cold-as-stone stepfather has written him off and his mother Robin (Kristen Scott Thomas of Random Hearts) hates him. So how does all this dysfunctional behavior come together to form a heartwarming story, it centers around a house or a shack on the beach. George’s
abusive father owned a shack on a cliff over the Pacific Ocean in Laguna Beach,
a run down piece of crap in an upper scale neighborhood. When his father killed
himself, George’s mother, and the woman in the car he hit while drunk driving,
the house was willed to George. He hated his father and he hated the house he
lived in for 20 years. After George trashed his office he collapsed outside the
building and this is when we learn he is dying of cancer. To make amends with
his all but forgotten son he forces him to live in the garage as they knock down
the shack and build a beautiful house he designed. He demands the kid removed
the make-up, the piercings and stop using. We slowly see the walls come down
from both father and son. Sadly we see fewer walls in the garage like around the
toilet, and the outdoor shower. In fact Sam reports his father on the building
code violation- an open toilet and a cooking space together. Robin shows up to
provide lunch to her ex-husband and son and grows closer to her old family and
more distant from her already distant husband. We have comic relief from the
sex-starved neighbor Coleen (Mary Steenburgen) who beds her teenage daughter
Alyssa’s (Jena Malone of Stepmom)
pimp boyfriend Josh (Ian Somerhalder). Josh the Porsche driving teenage pimp had
been trying to get Sam to work for him. Josh gets nailed and his parents take
away the car, so he has to 10-speed it around town for the summer. More comic
relief comes from George’s golden retriever that pisses and shits on the
neighbor’s lawn and Lexus. The shack comes down and a new future is going up,
only George has not told anyone he is dying. The
story is predictable, but director Irwin Winkler does a fine job in mixing it up
so it doesn’t become too sappy or farcical. Why is it though the only booty
shots in movies now a days is from skinny freakish dudes in droopy white briefs.
Just once I would like to see some beefcake in flannel drawers. Okay so I
won’t dock the film for putting the old guy’s ass on the screen but I will
give it an eight on the About-Movies.com scale.
Last updated: Saturday, October 28, 2006 05:37:38 PM Click Here to get back into frames.
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