The Glass House

THE GLASS HOUSE

Rating: C

Leelee Sobieski and Trevor Morgan are young siblings whose parents die in a mysterious car accident. Fortunately, Mom and Dad anticipated such a possible calamity, and bestowed upon the children a four million dollar trust fund to care for their needs. Now myself, my first question would be if the kids had alibis for the night of the accident, but the people in the movie are far less cynical. Instead, friends of the family Mr. and Mrs. Glass (Stellan Skarsgård and Diane Lane) become the kids' legal guardians, and whisk them away to their estate in Malibu. Yes, that would be the "Glass house" we're speaking of. Not only does it always seem to be raining at the Glass residence, but thundering and lightning too. I've lived in Los Angeles for five years now, and haven't seen a single thunderstorm yet. What am I doing wrong?

The Glasses aren't exemplary parents by any means. Mr. Glass walks around all the time with this creepy look on his face, and has an unnerving habit of popping into the scene when Sobieski is scantily clad. He always offers some lame excuse like "I thought you were a coyote." In his swimming pool? Um, so that must be a gun in his pocket. Mrs. Glass shoots up more regularly than the geysers in Yosemite. She obviously doesn't realize people in Glass houses shouldn't get stoned, but it's okay if she goes to work seeing triplicate since she's only a doctor anyway.

From the start, the Glasses are mean to the children. For instance, how would you like to wake up one morning and find Diane Lane in your bed? Wait - that came out wrong. Let's try another example. Sixteen-year-old Sobieski and her eleven-year-old brother are made to share a bedroom. If your reaction isn't "Ewwwww!," you're probably on the wrong website. Sobieski modestly goes out into the hall when she needs to change clothes. Director Daniel Sackheim obligingly follows her with the camera and leeringly watches. Ewwww!

Turns out Mr. Glass owes money to loan sharks, which is why they took the brats in in the first place. "We want you to trust us," Lane tells Sobieski. "We need your trust." Get it - they need the kids' trust? These screenwriters are about as subtle as a whack over the head with a 2x4. Speaking of loan sharks, don't ever borrow money from them. They're nasty people - they charge exhorbitant interest rates (probably almost as much as your credit card company), then threaten your life if you don't pay back fast enough. Sort of like your friends down at the gym. Fortunately, the loan sharks Mr. Glass does business with aren't very bright. If you're driving a car and the brakes go out, there are three ways to bring the car to a stop: Slowly apply the hand brake, downshift to a lower gear, or crash into the Ferrari in front of you. Guess which method these geniuses pick. How did these guys ever pass their loan sharking exam?

In reviews of other movies, I've often commented that a film has a good initial premise but then loses its way. Here, this path seems preordained from the start. The premise of two children being forced into a scary family situation is interesting, but there's really no place for it to go. The screenwriters apparently thought likewise, because the movie lapses into the old predictable "teenagers in jeopardy from scary adults" scenario. The least they could have done was make Sobieski and her brother the homicidal maniacs, and the poor Glasses their unsuspecting victims. Now that might have been cool...