House of D (David Duchovny). 97 minutes. Opens Friday (April 29). For venues and times, see Movies, page 100. Rating: N Rating: N
Sigh. It’s official. I am now totally over David Duchovny .
Yep, the truth is out there. His feature film debut as writer/director is more puzzling than any alien invasion, marked by such mushy Hallmark sentimentality and pitifully underwritten characters, it makes your average porn flick look realistic by comparison.
Here, a mentally challenged janitor ( Robin Williams , losing whatever credibility he had left) can hop in and out of mental deficiency to save the day and deliver politically correct satirical reflections, 13-year olds can run off to Paris and find work at fashion magazines and you can ride on the handlebars of a bike in Manhattan without fear of being killed by your typical angry cabbie.
And that doesn’t even begin to cover the disturbing relationship between Tommy (an overacting Anton Yelchin ) and his mom ( Téa Leoni , who, amazingly, was more believable in Spanglish), and Tommy’s mentorship by a tough-talking pothead in the titular Women’s House of Detention (singer Erykah Badu ).
Hey, we all know Williams will say yes to anything, and Leoni is married to Duchovny, but, man, Duchovny should know better. The guy went to freakin’ Yale and Princeton but he’s so deluded, he’s bragging to the press that House Of D was easy to write and that he did it in six days.
As he says in the film to his movie wife, “That’s what we call irony.”
