At Times I Am Downright Maniacal

*SPOILER ALERT! I AM GOING TO SPOIL PREMONITION AND THE LAKE HOUSE. THEY SPOIL THEMSELVES BUT I AM GOING TO SPOIL THEM MORE!*

Sandra Bullock. You are an ok lady. However, I am going to have to submit to you, in writing, my request that you stop making time travel movies from here on out.

No, I know, they aren’t time travel movies like Back to the Future. They simply involve you somehow changing the time stream. Really, you could take some notes from Doc Brown and Marty McFly because they know how to move through time and not mess everything up.

Premonition? Now, ok, that wasn’t too terrible. Your husband dies and, somehow, you pull a Billy Pilgrim and become unstuck in time. Unlike Mr. Pilgrim, however, you only move through time when you go to sleep at night.

Listen, Mrs. Bullock, I’m not going to lie to you. I did not pay close attention to the movie. Somehow you managed to run around in your chronologic confusion and implicate yourself in your husband’s fatal car accident so that you are suspected of foul play? Then you hate him and you’re glad he’s going to/did die, then you love him and try and make sure he doesn’t/won’t die. Your panicked phone calls make him pull his car over and then, wanting to rush home to you, pull out in front of a truck and die! This is a prime example of the dangers of time travel!

But look, we all know what this letter is really about, don’t we? That’s right. The Lake House. You and Keanu Reeves live in the same house two years apart, but manage to send one another letters. Adorable. Here’s my problem, if you’ll indulge me. You play a doctor. You’re eating lunch with your mom or something and a dude gets hit by a car. You try and save him but you can’t and he dies. You are very sad. A fellow doctor says that you should go someplace far away whenever you aren’t at work because you won’t be as sad. So you move into the titular home. You get letters from Keanu who lives two years behind you, as I already mentioned. You have some sort of weird penpal relationship. You fall in love. Keanu takes it upon himself to come meet you. He remembers how you wrote about the day you were eating lunch with your mom or something and, on his way to see you, gets hit by a car. I totally did not see that coming! Keanu is the man you couldn’t save! You realize this and stop him from coming to see you and then propose that you meet at a later date. He doesn’t go to see you, he doesn’t die, and you live happily ever after.

Wait.

Wait wait. See? Doc Brown would be friggin’ furious with you! That is a paradox of the highest degree! You move into the lake house because of a traumatic event that you then prevent from ever happening. So there’s no trauma. No need for a big glass house on a lake! You wouldn’t write to him! But if you don’t write to him, how could you tell him not to come meet you (not to mention that you wouldn’t write to him in the first place) so he would get hit by the car and you would be traumatized and I have even confused myself.

Therefore, it is on behalf of myself and anyone else who even remotely likes time travel as an element of a story I ask you to please refrain from making any more movies about changing history or traveling through time or any other chronologic hijinks.

Thank you.

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