The Lake House

The Lake House (2006)

4 corrections since 9 Jan '17, 00:00

(13 votes)

Corrected entry: Kate asks Alex to rescue her copy of Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' from the train station bench. Alex tells Kate he will save it for her for when they meet. Then, in her apartment bedroom at 1620 Racine that she's sharing with boyfriend Morgan, Kate checks a loose floorboard to find that book hidden beneath; though the story makes clear that Alex has never been inside the apartment.

tedloveslisa

Correction: When I saw the scene in which Kate discovers the book under the floor, I immediately thought that Alex, at some point, went into the apartment building while it was still in the process of being built and furnished and hid the book there. He, as an architect and builder was able to pull it of and thus fulfill his promise of bringing her the book. He did it sometime after they broke up and before Kate moved in. I therefore believe this was not a plot hole but a clever idea that fits the movie perfectly.

Corrected entry: Kate is in the future and has named the dog Jack and informs Alex of this in a letter, which he receives in a magic time-travel mailbox. Alex adopts this same dog in the past, before the dog has ever met Kate. Jack tests out the name "Jack" on the dog, and the dog reacts to this name. The dog should not know this name as it hasn't yet met Kate. This is backwards. Alex should have been the one to tell Kate of a name he gave to the dog, and she should have been the one to test it on the dog.

Uncel Mark

Correction: Jack the dog is magical, like the mailbox. Neither character knows where he came from. The dog is a sort of guardian. He runs to the past from the future. Re-watch the film, and this is clear. This interpretation is important for enjoying the film, if even more illogical than a magical Lake house without a magical dog.

Corrected entry: Jack the dog appears from nowhere early in the movie and is taken in by Alex. In the future, Kate, who has not yet met Alex, owns Jack and mentions her name in a letter sent to Alex. Since at that point in the film their paths had not crossed in either present or future, where did the dog's name come from? For that matter, where did the DOG come from?

Correction: I remember her saying " come on Jack, come on Jackie!" Jackie was said very quickly.

Correction: The dog was just a stray. Chronologically, Alex names him Jack after he realizes it's the same dog Kate has. Kate called the dog Jack because that's what the dog answered to at the time Kate began caring for it, having been called "Jack" by Alex. It's circuitous.

Phixius

Other mistake: Every time somebody climbs to the attic in the "lake house", you see a small, dark, enclosed chamber with some abandoned stuff. However, as soon as you see the "lake house" from the outside, it is a single-level construction entirely made of glass, with no inside staircase or ladder, and three smaller glasshouses on the roof. There is not a single wooden panel to enclose the attic, nor any construction in the house that looks like it could be that attic.

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Suggested correction: It's not a "dark, enclosed chamber"; it's a glass surround with part of the windows darkened, but others letting light in. The ladder is shown near the end of the movie (when he's putting the box of letters away) to fold up into a small space, and the "attic" is merely a small space, easily the height of the roof plus one of the glass bits you can see from outside the house.

After looking at many photos of the house, there is no space for the attic.

Continuity mistake: During the opening credits, Kate leaves the Lake House via the kitchen, where we see the indoor tree is branches only-no leaves. Then from her car she looks back to the house, where we now see that tree is covered in orange leaves.

tedloveslisa

More mistakes in The Lake House

Kate: One man I can never meet. Him, I would like to give my whole heart to.

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Question: Why did Alex have to wait until Valentine's Day 2008 to meet Kate? Even assuming for the sake of argument that the "time-traveling" letters stopped after Alex avoided the bus accident on "his" Valentine's Day 2006, Alex certainly knew how to find Kate at that time - and vice versa. The two-year gap where Kate had not known about Alex had closed by that time, and each knew about the other.

Answer: The movie is not about them trying to find ways to meet. They are not trying that hard to meet and the time distance is a metaphor. I think the movie misses the tension that she is trepidatious about meeting and he is trying to respect that. He gets killed the first time for trying to force it! This shows when the stack of letters is piling away. She is worried he is a coward who will not be able to handle real romance. This is shown in his retreat to build mass produced houses and has something to do with his mom/dad. She's the doctor, he's the architect: she saves people for a living and is hung up about her own father's death. It's only when it's life or death that she gets over it and he also figures himself out and stops trying to fix everything.

Answer: Kate asked him to wait, and come in 2008, so that's what he did. Likely they could have found each other before then, but it might not have even occurred to either of them.

They started communicating after he died in 2006 (her time) on his way to see her, but 2004 his time, neither of them knew he had died by this time so there was no way they could have met, my question is how did he know to go and meet her the first time if they hadn't started communicating yet?

They had been communicating for 2 years at that point - his time. Hence why he was going to meet her and got killed in the process.

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