If I had known that the script for Life as a House was written by Mark Andrus, the man who also penned As Good As It Gets, I would have braced myself for another long theme-heavy film filled with delicate drama and a bittersweet ending. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing. Yes, Life as a House feels lengthy and sad, but the movie is poignant and is an earnest look at a man's path toward happiness. [But it's not bad.]
Not since Ang Lee's The Ice Storm has Kevin Kline performed with the subtlety he does as the graying life-drained George. After he is abruptly fired from his architecture firm, he finds out he's dying. This is a well-and-good depressing setup for the premise of the movie. But it's when George has an odd epiphany to rebuild his sad existence of a house and estranged American Beauty's-Jane-like Sam (Hayden Christensen) is forced to stay with him during summer break that the movie begins to pick up. Christensen is convincing as the all-too-familiar angry druggie adolescent who, thanks to George's new lust for life, grows alongside the house and George himself.
Now, because the rub about this whole thing is that George hated his father (his father gave him the ugly house that he wants to demolish and rebuild), and the tradition is continuing with Sam hating George, we're supposed to understand that the physical renovation equals the rebuilding of their uneven father-son relation into a stable one because it's so transparent. As corny as it sounds, it actually works, and pulls us into the story.
Though the movie feels like it will go on forever from the unending complexities within all the interwoven relationships, it's balanced out because all the actors are well-cast and believable in their roles. At the house-building-complex turning point, estranged ex-love Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas) comes back into George's life and then the neighbors get in on the building, too--especially the teenage neighbor (Jena Malone) and Sam.
Andrus gracefully manages to write smart humor into George's and Sam's characters, breaking up the sober tension that often emerges. Even with George's borderline-gushy, American Beauty-esque voiceover conclusively explaining his metaphorical life as a house, the movie itself, well, stands on its own.
