What we have here is the failure of the writer Wesley Strick and director Daniel Sackeim to see what is right in front of them. The Glass House is rated R for sinister, but research was left out of the basic of story lines and flawed the suspense portion of the movie. Leelee Sobieski (Never Been Kissed) stars as Ruby Baker, a teenager from the valley that loses her parents abruptly in an auto accident. Ruby and her younger brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan, Jurassic Park III) have to go live with family friends in Malibu. There is nothing suspenseful about any of this film. The entire plot is predictable up to the complacent ending. The Malibu family is Erin and Terry Glass played by Diane Lane (Hardball) and Stellan Skarsgard. They start off a very nice couple but quickly get creepy and obvious right away. Too many clues to what is going to happen next are dropped into our laps, so it is not much of a thriller because once the scene takes place it is already stale. The plot itself is interesting enough but the story line is too weak to support it.

The film begins with getting to know Ruby and her friends. They attend a private school, sneak out to run around at night, smoke, go off campus everyday to eat pizza and are basically teenage girls. Ruby enjoys drawing and is good at it. Her parents are concerned and positive influences on her and Rhett. When Grace Baker (Rita Wilson) and Dave Baker (Michael O’Keefe, Ghosts of Mississippi) are gone, Ruby’s friends attend the funeral, they are close friends, which dropping that portion of the storyline seems silly. These girls could have played more of a role in developing the dwindling plot. After the funeral Ruby meets her Uncle Jack whom she blows off, then she meets the estate attorney (Bruce Dern, All the Pretty Horses) who tells her she can trust him. How many smarmy attorneys can be trusted? Granted she is a teenager, but we have already established she is a bright teenager. During the conversation with the lawyer he confesses to her that her parents were thrifty and with the sum in their trust accounts they will never want for anything. Right about here is when everything seems to fall apart. The Glasses are as transparent as their house, how hackneyed could it get. They are pulled out of private school and sent to public school and are forced to share a small bedroom. Well as Ruby’s mother put it, the proportions are all right but is she drawing what she is seeing. We the audience were set up to see distorted images, but the director spends so much time on that aspect he neglects important details and sabotages the film.

At times the film moves along at a nice speed at other times it stands still. I enjoyed the concept, just not the delivery so I give The Glass House a five on the About-Movies.com scale.

Last updated: Saturday, October 28, 2006 05:37:40 PM

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