Life As A House or, How Darth Vader Got A Blowjob From A Guy

Yes. You read that right. The once and future baddest bad guy in the universe once got a BJ from another dude. But he was getting paid for it, so it’s alright. Right?

Life As A House is actually not about gay prostitution. It’s about George Monroe (Kevin Kline) and his fight to make his son, Sam (Hayden Christensen love him for the last few months of his (George’s) life. Sam has been staying with his mom, Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her new husband, Peter Kimball (Jamey Sheridan from The Ice Storm) and their two kids, of course not happily. There’d be no movie if he was happy. In fact, there’d be no movie if anybody was happy.

But, as it is, there’s not a single happy person in this entire movie. Ok. That’s not entirely true. Alyssa Beck (Jena Malone from Donnie Darko), George’s young next door neighbor, is fairly happy. Especially when she finally meets Sam, the guy she’s been watching all the time at school. Oh sure, she’s got a boyfriend (Ian Somerhalder from the upcoming Rules Of Attraction), but he’s an asshole, so she’d rather have the creepy looking tall kid with blue hair and all the shit in his face. That’s right. Sam makes Marilyn Manson look like…um…well, a total fucking freak. But he is a big fan and seems to be trying to look a little like him. How the hell a hottie like Alyssa is interested in this guy I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s because she’s seen his dad’s dick (he takes a leak in back of his dilapidated house every morning) and wants to know if he’s as hung. Her mom (Mary Steenburgen) is pretty pissed off about George’s morning habit, but there’s not just a whole lot she can do about it. Just like one of his other neighbors (Sam Robards, son of Jason, from A.I.) can’t stop George’s dog from pissing on his car, paper or whatever else happens to be hanging out in the yard. And just like the friendly neighborhood cop on the beat (Scott Bakula in one of his few good roles since Quantum Leap) doesn’t seem to want to stop George from being the weirdo that he is.

Ok. Enough rambling.

So George finds out that he’s got cancer. He’s been estranged from his son for about 10 years and finally realizes how to get him back. He’s going to keep him for his last summer on Earth and build a house. Right now he lives in the house that his father built. It’s falling apart and is basically just an eyesore to the rest of the neighborhood. But now, with the help of his son who hates him, he’s going to build a real house. He’s going to build a beautiful house. He’s going to build his house.

Alright, alright. The imagery is pretty “hit you over the head” here, but the only question you really need to ask is, “Is it effective.” And the answer is, “Mmm. Pretty much. Yeah.” Maybe it’s because the acting is pretty damn good. Or maybe it’s because Irwin Winkler (famed producer of some of Scoresese’s best movies and all of the Rocky flicks) has finally directed a good movie without Robert DeNiro. (He also directed two of Bob’s lost movies of the early 90s: Guilty By Suspicion and Night And The City–they’re so lost that I’ve never seen them.)

Irwin directs his great cast well. Kline puts in a pretty amazing performance as a character who could have just been another “disease of the week” character. Instead he uses his famous sense of humor and turns George into someone who is not only ok with his impending death, but he jokes about it with people who don’t know. And, MY GOD, does he look terrible as the movie goes on. I don’t know how he got so thin, but he eventually looks like a skeleton with skin just barely even touching it.

The next question you have to ask of this movie is, “Can Anakin act?” Well, yes and no. I had always heard that he was the only really good thing about this movie and that it totally proved that he could act like a mutha. Well, as long as he’s not emoting too much he’s awesome. As soon as he starts yelling he moves into whiny territory. That may have been the intention since he’s a teenager and all, but did he need to be that annoying? (Didn’t I ask the same question in my Episode II review?) But, as I said, when he’s just being normal or hanging out with Alyssa he’s great.

And speaking of Alyssa, I love Jena Malone. Not only can she act, but she has to be one of the cutest under 20 actresses working today. Through the whole movie I kept thinking, “She better be at least 18 else I’m going to feel REALLY guilty later tonight.” Well, she almost is. Just a few more months.

But they really make her character a little freaky for a high school chick. I dunno. Maybe I just didn’t know the right girls. Everything was ok until she suddenly decides to jump in the shower with Sam. But they’re just friends. “I’ve seen people before. It’s no big deal.”

Right.

I totally wish I had known a girl like that in high school.

But enough about her. The rest of the cast was just as good. They all play their roles with humor and sadness, which can’t be easy to do. Kristin Scott Thomas is beautiful as a woman who is torn between two men that she loved at least at one point in her life. And Mary Steenburgen is also great as the ever tormented next door neighbor who, even though she is annoyed by George, she obviously has a soft spot in her heart for him and his son. (By the way, I never really thought that she was all that attractive, but she spends a little time in her bra and panties in this and she looks damn good for a librarian.)

It’s not a perfect movie by any means and does occasionally betray its disease of the week origin, but overall it’s much better than I expected. Certainly worth a look on a lonely night when you feel like the whole world has left you behind. This way you can watch some people with more fucked up lives than you had any right to imagine.