Life as a House follows the poignant, often humorous journey of one man who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, then decides to tear down his house, and begins rebuilding an old house in hopes that it will fix his relationship with his son and ex-wife.
Life as a House reaches easily past all your intellectual and emotional barriers, back into that spot behind your heart, where the levers that release tears are stored.
The movie gets us to feel about the characters, their relationships, and their circumstances, and that goes a long way towards allowing us to forgive the screenplays' occasional mis-steps and wrong turns.
Thank goodness there are actors capable of delivering performances better than the scripts they're given. Too bad there aren't more of them in this movie.
...the people who assembled Life as a House imagined it as a kind of American Beauty for the slightly more-literal-minded, for those who hated or felt baffled that film will likely like and apprehend this one.
Common Sense Media
December 25, 2010
Uneven but moving story of reconcilliation.
Globe and Mail
March 19, 2002
Gauged strictly by the gag-factor, a more honest title might be Life as a Basement Apartment with Bad Light and a Dank Smell.
