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THE LAKE HOUSE Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock reunite for the first time in 12 years, but the end result clearly isn't up to Speed. Two strangers who become pen pals come to the startling realization that they're actually corresponding over the years -- she's writing and receiving his letters in 2006, he's doing likewise in 2004 -- and that the mailbox at the title property serves as the magic portal through which they're able to communicate. The Lake House certainly has its heart in the right place, but the end result doesn't even begin to inspire the requisite level of swoony romance on our parts. Director Alejandro Agresti is more interested in the film's look than its substance, while David Auburn's script is arid and uninvolving. As for the leads, Reeves acquits himself well enough -- he's learned how to take advantage of his scruffy appeal -- but Bullock once again plays against her natural charisma by offering a dour, dull characterization. After about 20 minutes, you just wish somebody would tickle her. *1/2
NACHO LIBRE The premise held promise -- a lowly cook (Jack Black) at a Mexican monastery moonlights as a masked wrestler -- but Nacho Libre instead turns out to be a surprisingly mild affair, one of those films where the creative juices dried up at some point between conception and execution. Writer-director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and co-scripter Mike White (The School of Rock) serve up a few potent gags (love that corn in the eye), but they're spread mighty thin throughout the picture's running time. The remainder of the film is split between the sort of scatological humor we can find anywhere else -- See Jack Black break wind! See Jack Black sit on the toilet! See Jack Black handle animal excrement! -- and lazy south-of-the-border caricatures that aren't funny, offensive or offensively funny. After a while, this disappointing film just lays there, like a wrestler body-slammed one time too many. **
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST Those expecting amazing feats of derring-do won't be disappointed by this sequel to the 2003 smash. The effects-driven action scenes are clearly the picture's highlights, and they alone make this worth the price of admission. But while the first Pirates felt like both a self-contained movie and the theme park attraction on which it was based, this one just feels like a roller coaster ride, full of momentary thrills but leaving little in its wake except a sudden desire to rest for a minute. It isn't breathless as much as it grows tiresome, and it's especially depressing to see how little the characters have been allowed to evolve. The central thrust finds Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) tangling with the ghostly Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) in an effort to save his own soul from eternal damnation; it's possible that his scheme will require sacrificing his friends (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), but that's a compromise the self-serving Jack can accept. The best fantasy tales are often the ones in which the special effects are subservient to the characters, not the other way around; still, this moves quick enough to keep most customers satisfied. **1/2
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION Robert Altman's best film since the one-two punch of The Player and Short Cuts might at first glance seem like a minor work, an ambling, congenial picture constructed as little more than an opportunity to corral several major talents (Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, etc.) and give them a chance to sing songs and tell jokes in a relaxed setting. That the film is inspired by Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show adds to that impression, since the on-air Keillor is the epitome of laid-back, down-home hospitality. Yet for all its levity, the central theme focuses on the specter of Death -- how it hovers around us, how it haunts us, and how it can inform our every move. But the mood isn't depressing; it's bittersweet. And that's only part of the time: When the radio performers are front and center, this is nothing less than a joyous celebration of both Americana and the arts. The final sequence -- a masterpiece of ambiguity -- is simply exquisite, a somber, rueful moment inexorably illustrating that, in death as in life, the show must go on. ****