David Duchovny’s writing and directing debut, “House of D,” fails in large part because of a casting problem, not an acting problem.
It’s not really Robin Williams’ fault that people keep picking him to play mawkish idiot savants or repressed creeps. But it is the fault of the people who choose him that they can’t see how his indelible personality will overwhelm a movie meant to be quietly sweet rather than showy.
Despite a weak foundation built with coming-of-age clich s, “House of D” almost works as a melancholy look back at the line between gawky teenager and a timid adult. Anton Yelchin as adolescent Tommy Warshaw has a winning earnestness that shines above a slapdash script and uninspired storytelling.
This virtue is obscured by lingering memories of Williams as a retarded man wisecracking his way past all credibility. Duchovny employs too much of Williams’ improv personality instead of having him portray a scared, unwanted man-child.
The story is told in flashback, from Warshaw’s (Duchovny) perspective as an irresponsible American expatriate in trouble with his son and estranged wife in Paris.
He looks back on his 13th year in New York, when, as he puts it, he should have heard the tumblers click into place as he cracked the mysterious safe of manhood. Instead, Duchovny’s character narrates, he heard the safe lock shut; now he worries his own adolescent son will make the same mistakes.
The New York Duchovny portrays is an odd mix of fairy-tale sweetness and unconvincing domestic tragedy. Young Tommy’s father has died of cancer, and his mother (Duchovny’s real-life wife, T a Leoni) takes too many pills to ease her depression.
Tommy, meanwhile, pals around with the mentally challenged Pappass (Williams), ogling older women on their butcher-shop deliveries and pursuing a crush on an Upper West Side girl.
“House of D” is the local detention center for women, where Tommy and Pappass bury their savings underneath a window. Tommy strikes up an improbable friendship with a woman imprisoned high above in an isolation cell (Erykah Badu). The hooker with a soul of gold doesn’t help to disseminate the cloud of clich s – she and Tommy hold a series of hokey heart-to-heart chats through the barred window.
The glaring problems fade occasionally as Duchovny builds a nice sense of time and place – Tommy and Melissa (Zelda Williams) dance and neck to the Doobie Brothers and Elton John, their lips seeking skin beneath those wide, wide lapels.
Magic doesn’t last, though, for the adolescents or the moviemakers. Teens fight their way to maturity a million different ways, but only a few of their stories look convincing onscreen. “House of D” is as uneven and hard to dance to as the full-length version of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
**
“House of D”
PG-13 for adult language, humor and situations|1 hour, 37 minutes|COMING OF AGE|Written and directed by David Duchovny; starring Anton Yelchin, Robin Williams, T a Leoni and David Duchovny|
Opens today at the Chez Artiste.
