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70A film that takes a steadfastly gentle look at some of life's harshest moments while not overlooking its joys, House of D deserves a chance to find an audience.
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63Steeped in pitch-perfect nostalgia and propelled by equal doses of comedy and tragedy.
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50David Duchovny delivers a clearly heartfelt but terminally mawkish and awkward directorial debut in House of D.
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50The film looks and feels authentic, but Duchovny has powered his undeniably personal journey with a counterfeit heart.
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50Sappy and improbable.
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50A heartfelt, '70s-era coming-of-age story with a prologue and epilogue set in the present day, marks the filmmaking debut of actor David Duchovny, who also wrote the symbol-studded screenplay.
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50Though charming at times, just misses, due to a contrived story.
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50Duchovny bookends his story with a modern-day framing device that takes all that has gone so well until this point and turns it cloyingly sentimental.
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50The good news is that Duchovny has an undeniable feel for this medium, and a fine rapport with actors.
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50David Duchovny's debut as a writer-director puts little flesh on the bones of the roguish tricks he got up to as a lad in Greenwich Village in the 1970s.
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50David Duchovny scores considerably higher as director than as screenwriter.
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42An overly picaresque first feature written and directed by David Duchovny, who also co-stars.
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40The war between highly specific coming-of-age angst and icky-sticky overcoming-adversity cliches eventually brings the whole thing down.
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40Here's an interesting surprise: Dour, dry Duchovny's directorial debut is more weepy than creepy.
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40House Of D never feels honest, but when Duchovny consciously tries to score sentiment points, the strain is more than the film can handle.
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40A little more literary than lifelike, House of D is a story that feels too pat, and too perfect, for its own good.
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40Forgettable coming-of-age story.
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38House of D is the kind of movie that particularly makes me cringe, because it has such a shameless desire to please; like Uriah Heep, it bows and scrapes and wipes its sweaty palm on its trouser leg, and also like Uriah Heep, it privately thinks it is superior.
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38That someone as smart as Duchovny would get bogged down in such predictable treacle is a mystery worthy of investigation by Scully and Mulder.
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38The movie tries to be both comical and touching, as befitting the coming-of-age genre. But it feels forced, derivative and sometimes sappily sentimental.
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38House of D, is like the kind of sticky greeting card you'd find on CBS some Sunday nights.
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38A bunch of scenes in need of a tighter narrative and, more importantly, a raison d'être.
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38All the characters are writ in broad strokes, making it impossible to sympathize with, much less relate to, anyone.
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30Marred by a rambling voice-over at one end and a pat therapeutic resolution on the other, the film has a nice half-hour patch somewhere in the middle.
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30The burden of the story, which is maudlin and entirely unbelievable, weighs down even the more credible performances.
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25House of D, arrives in theaters this week, after debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. I'm sorry to report it's the opposite of impressive.
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25All in all, it's hard to dispute that House of D declares its own worth on arrival.
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25As a director, Duchovny is in big trouble every frame of the way. His characters ring false, his scenes seem improperly motivated in a glaring way, and his distasteful obsession with imagery of unflushed cigarette butts bobbing in a toilet is beyond inexplicable.
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20D is for Dreadful. And Duchovny.
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12The fatal flaw in David Duchovny's big-screen directorial debut, House of D, is not Robin Williams as a retarded janitor. It's David Duchovny, the man who chose to cast Robin Williams as a retarded janitor.
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10Everyone in the film seems to be in solitary, thanks to Mr. Duchovny's stultifying style. If there was a single moment of spontaneity, it escaped me. Ditto for frivolity, though bogus poetry abounds.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 14
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Mixed: 3 out of 14
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Negative: 3 out of 14
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PatC.4A good story, perhaps a very good story, but poorly told, perhaps very poorly told.
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billc.3
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camdenl7David duchovney is impressive as a writer/director, but his acting holds this film back.