THE HOUSE OF D

It is hard to dislike a film with good intentions—especially when the star wattage of David Duchovny is in the room presenting it.

I love David, I really do. I was a HUGE X-Files fan, and have always admired the fact that Duchovny was smart, funny, and self-effacing in real life. And heck, if I'm right, I think he was an English major at Yale. You gotta like that. So David came to town to present his feature film writing/directing debut The House of D. He was warm and charming and funny in the Q&A, and I have to applauded the Seattle audience for being respectful enough to not yell out, "So, when's the next X-Files movie coming out?" And he was open to the constructive criticism offered by the audience (though it was all mostly ass-kissing). He seemed like a regular guy—just happy to be there—and we were all proud of him for getting his labor of love on screen.

But now with a little distance, I have to review his film more critically. The House of D is a coming-of-age story. Tommy, played in present-day adult form by Duchovny, is reminiscing about the year he was forced to grow up. Flashback to young Tommy (Anton Yelchin), a 13-year-old kid in 1974 Greenwich Village, New York City. His mom (Téa Leoni), a recent young widow, smokes and cries all day. Tommy tries to cheer her up, and seems to be the only one bringing home any bacon. He has a delivery job for a butcher, and shares the job with his best friend Pappass, a mentally disabled older man.

OK, now here comes a fatal flaw. Robin Williams plays Pappass. He wears, for no discernable reason, prosthetic teeth that are big and square and white, making him grimace with his lips out—like you do when you wear braces—whenever he smiles. It's creepy. And Williams playing simple is just weird and sort of patronizing to anyone who is mentally challenged in real life. It is the same schtick as he did in the film Jack, which I was unfortunately lucky to catch on motel cable TV once (in that film he is an adult who is really a kid... or something like that—I never really quite "got it"). Williams' Pappass is a sub-plot that brings the story to a screeching halt whenever he is on-screen. His presence made me wince.

Much more interesting, besides Tommy's flirtation with a cute rich girl (Zelda Williams... Robin's daughter!), is Tommy's friendship with a woman in "The House of D". Such is the nickname of The Women's House of Detention, a prison right in the middle of Greenwich, where pimps, boyfriends, husbands, and the like could literally stand on the sidewalk and yell up at the women in the prison, who listen through the bars in the windows. Tommy falls into a friendship with woman he calls Lady (Erykah Badu), a down-and-out woman who offers him encouragement and life advice. She is really the only one watching out for him. When disaster strikes in Tommy's personal life, she is the one that gives him direction that will change his life forever.

The relationship between Lady and Tommy is by far the best thing about The House of D. Yelchin and Badu have a natural wonderful chemistry together... so it was shocking to find out that they filmed their scenes several days apart, and they were barely on the set at the same time. Badu is especially excellent, and exudes so much natural charisma onscreen that you wish that she was more of a major character.

As for the rest of the movie, it is like Duchovny tried to string too many stories together, some of them schmaltzy and predictable (the relationship with mom, the mentally slow best friend), others really lacking dramatic weight (the bookended scenes in Paris with Tommy as an adult really didn't work). But Anton Yelchin, as young Tommy, is really pretty great. He's cute and smart, but not obnoxious. He manages to carry the story, even when it is weak. Though the film is cloyingly sentimental, I do admit that I found myself getting teary-eyed more than once. And luckily for The House of D, it IS Tommy's story (as opposed to say, Tommy and Pappass), which ultimately makes it watchable.