David Duchovny's \House of D"" seems smart. Reading a synopsis will make it sound collectively subtle and touching, but ""House of D"" is not this type of movie.
The type is this: movies that tip-toe into theaters so quietly that if it weren't for their relatively celebrated casts, nobody would even know they exist. Its limited release provides it an aura of mystery, and because of this, ""House of D"" seems like it should be smart and quietly beautiful.
However, this coming of age tale about a boy finding manhood is not smart. The acting is almost as bad as the screenplay, which is a catastrophe placed on top of a schmaltzy soundtrack and characters that just don't work. Taken separately, ""House of D"" has a few nice, intimate touches, but as a whole, this movie is a sappy, juvenile mess.
Duchovny plays Tom, an artist in Paris who tells the story of his past in New York City to his wife Coralie (Magali Amadei) after hiding it for quite some time. The story takes the audience back to Tom's childhood and introduces us to Tommy, the young character played by the perpetually horrendous Anton Yelchin. Yelchin does a lot of whining, and his voice is simply unpleasant to listen to. Robin Williams, donning new teeth and a slightly slimmer physique, jumps in to play Pappass, a mentally retarded janitor with whom Tommy spends nearly all of his time.
Williams was a poor choice for the role. He's brilliant as a flamboyant magic genie or a poignant psychologist, but because he tends to ham up every character that he plays, it's almost impossible to take him seriously in a role like this. Williams is such a star that it wouldn't be surprising if he joined the production simply as a ploy to get people to watch the movie.
The title refers to a women's prison called the House of D, where Tommy meets Bernadette (Erykah Badu). She is hidden in a jail cell many levels off the ground, so he never actually sees her face. He receives from her wit and insight, and is the only half-convincing performance of the entire movie. Badu's voice, as she yells down from the window, brings to the screen a couple of laughs and transient passes at the absurd idea that Duchovny had any clue what he was doing when he wrote this mess.
Te?? Leoni plays Yelchin's run-of-the-mill neurotic, depressed mother-a character with no motivation for anything that she does or says. Her presence only contributes to an ensemble cast of bad character-writing.
Full of contrived clich??s, as well as too much crying, overdone life philosophy and characters who never quite know what they want, ""House of D"" is an all out sap-fest. Thankfully, it's barely over an hour and a half long. It wants to be a tale about manhood, but somehow strikes the notes of a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime.
Perhaps the D in the title stands for Detention. Or maybe it stands for Duchovny. Whatever was intended, ""House of D"" should stand for House of Disaster.
