LIFE AS A HOUSE
Directed by Irwin Winkler
Starring Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas
Playing at Cinemark 12 in Hadley
If there ever was a movie that relied on good acting to obscure glaring flaws, it’s Life As A House. A dubious attempt to cross American Beauty with a Hallmark card, the film features edgier moments that give way to easy sentimentality and sitcom-cute distractions. In an early scene, young actor Hayden Christensen (soon to be seen as Anakin Skywalker in “Star Wars: Episode II”), playing depressive teen Sam, is shown waking up, huffing gas, slipping a noose hanging in his closet around his neck, and then proceeding to masturbate. This may be a shocking scene (it must’ve shocked the mostly gray-haired audience I attended with), but it ends in a sitcom moment: the pole holding the noose snaps, dropping Sam to the ground.
Director Irwin Winkler (At First Sight) and screenwriter Marc Andrus (As Good As It Gets) want to have it both ways – they want to shock us with sex, drugs and nudity while also reassuring us everything will be okay, there will be a smiley face and a cheap laugh at the end.
As flawed as it may be, Life As A House can be recommended due to the sheer force of its acting. Kevin Kline gives a career pinnacle performance (it deserves an Oscar nod) as George, a middle-aged man who discovers he’s dying of cancer the same day he’s fired from his job. With only months to live, George decides to spend the summer tearing down the rotting, cliff-side shack he lived his whole life in to build the dream house he always wanted. He also wants to repair relationships with his ex-wife Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas), remarried to an emotionally constipated workaholic (Jamey Sheridan), and estranged son Sam.
George recruits Sam to spend the summer to help on the project. Sam is hostile and wants to leave, until he meets girl next door Alyssa (Jena
Malone), whose divorced mother Colleen (Mary Steenburgen) once dated George. Meanwhile, Alyssa’s boyfriend (Ian Somerhalder) is sleeping with Colleen while trying to recruit Sam as a male prostitute. George is keeping his cancer a secret and battling an uptight neighbor who wants to wreck George’s dream.
The movie felt like a soap opera and there are times the Life comes perilously close to Lifetime movie territory. Will anyone be surprised that Sam takes the piercings out of his face and learns to love his parents? Or that Robin falls back in love with George? The movie admirably veers into darker waters, especially when dealing with Sam, but it always plays it safe, preferring to tie things up with a tidy bow. There are a few one-liners and even some slapstick, and plenty of teary speeches and heartfelt confessions. Imagine an American Beauty where Kevin Spacey hugs his family rather than telling them off, and you get the picture.
By the end, I liked Life As A House. I even choked back a tear or two. It isn’t a fantastic film – in ordinary cases it wouldn’t even be a good one – but it is elevated by the acting. Kline, an Oscar winner for A Fish Called Wanda is a terrific actor who has a gift for bitter comedy and can deliver even the most groaning lines with aplomb. He’s also a remarkably subtle dramatic actor, able to underplay even the most overwrought scenes. Scott Thomas, often cast as a cold fish, gets to play a warm human being for once. Christensen, in his first real film role (previous credit: the short lived Fox Family series “Higher Ground”) proves to be as good as Kline. For an actor destined to become the next big heartthrob, this role proves to be a brave choice and Christensen more than lives up to the promise. He alternates between anger and loneliness, despair and tentative happiness with a skill that sets him miles apart from the pretty boys that often capture the attention of young girls.
Winkler and Andrus do their hardest to turn Life As A House into a soggy melodrama. The cast does their best to raise it above the muck of a made-for-TV drivel. In large part, the cast succeeds.
