Wonderful Movie

Fresh and Exciting

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

On Thanksgiving 1983, twenty years after US President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the wealthy Pascal family of Virginia prepare for a stormy reunion. Recently released from a psychiatric institution, attractive Parker Posey (as Jacqueline "Jackie O" Pascal) takes center stage. She remains there, for the most part. Arriving home is Ms. Posey's twin brother Josh Hamilton (as Marty). His surprise for the family is fiancée Tori Spelling (as Lesly), a donut shop clerk. She arouses attention from the twins' younger brother Freddie Prinze Jr. (as Anthony). We know there are going to be some serious sexual problems when family matriarch Genevieve Bujold tells Ms. Spelling her twins are so close, "Jackie's hand was holding Marty's penis when they came out of the womb."...As you'll see, she has a hard time letting go...Mark Waters took this story from Wendy MacLeod's play, without giving us many reasons why it shouldn't have remained there. The inserted footage of the real Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom Posey emulates, reveals the actress' hair and make-up are off the mark. The pink outfit with "pill box" hat is recognizable, though. Other than that, Posey offers an interesting but insensitive characterization. It is not impersonation and the association of President and Mrs. Kennedy with this family's insanity lacks depth. It's happenstance. The film is promoted as a comedy, with the quotes "Dark, Clever Comedy!" (GQ Magazine) and "Bitingly Funny!" (Elle) prominently featured. However, the film is not very funny. The comic aspects likely worked better in the stage production.**** The House of Yes (9/12/97) Mark Waters ~ Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze Jr.

Very poor!I am very tired of these kinds of movies. They seem to be a reaction against Hollywood. And in the end these "independent" movies are just as trite and empty.The first 5 minutes are intriguing and comedic. Afterwards, you get the sense that it becomes more and more of a play. Which I am not sure that there is any purpose in filming a play. I would imagine that the play would be a lot better. With the psychological dimension, a play can bring the viewer to imagine more than a film. But to film basically a play, you get the least of both world, in my opinion. Unless it is done in a very original way, like dogville. This movie just seemed trite and transparent to me.

House of Yes starts weird, gets unpleasant, then malicious, then off the charts icky, then it becomes nasty, etc.. Presumably it does this in a very conscious attempt to become a cult movie with the blackest humor in about twenty years. And if you can make it all the way through, you're the hippest viewer left standing! some reward. It's such a harangue that sensitive viewers will be turned off, anti-social viewers will be happy to see middle-class values punctured, and thoughtful viewers will just see it as a machine for provocation. The story is an escalating series of irritants: A girl waits for her brother to visit from college. We learn she has pretty bad taste, but that's excused because she's insane. But she's insane because she has an incestuous relationship with her twin brother. But her twin brother shows up with a fiancée. Then, amateurish verbal tics start to accumulate, upstaging the material (She's not a fiancé, she's a fee-OHN-SAY). Then the girl humiliates the fiancé, with about thirty cruel remarks. Then the girl and the twin brother let their sexual boundaries lapse in front of the others, and start touching inappropriately. etc. That's about the first half an hour. All of this heads nowhere... except to a reenactment of the moment she almost killed him reenacting the Kennedy assassination.It's very difficult to put your head into the mind of its makers and imagine who the target demographic is for this; which means it's extremely hard to imagine how it got made... how someone sat through the play and thought, "Incest... humor... psychosis... this will make a terrific movie!" The stagey script makes annoying use of a cutesy device where characters repeat lines twice, or even three times before they can move on. A character will say "Marty's coming home." the 2nd character will say, "Marty's coming home?" and then back to character one who says "I said, Marty's coming home." This becomes irritating extremely fast. Three minutes don't pass without a repeated line. It's like listening to people act out a flowchart.I used to think the humor in this outweighed the Ick factor (it's why I own a copy) but then I grew up. This was my first Parker Posey movie. And as always, she's sly and memorable. But now after seeing her other movies, this is really a piece of nastiness. It's made competently for a low budget, but it's almost mannerist in how off-putting it is. I'm not a believer in the idea that I need to like the characters in a piece, but I haven't seen a decent movie yet where I actively dislike everyone on screen.

This film's thick and pervasive irony requires a sophisticated sense of humor. Starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., and the inimitable Tori Spelling, "The House of Yes" didn't give me great expectations, but for Parker Posey I was willing to take the risk. It turned out to be perhaps the most original comedy I've ever seen and one of my new favorite films. Naive reviewers and low ratings here on IMDb have confirmed my suspicion that most people completely miss the point of this film. There is nothing earnest or straightforward in the least about the story or the dialog. Writer Wendy McLeod and director Mark Waters are trying to do for film and theater (certain genres of them, at least) what "A Mighty Wind" did for folk music, or "Best in Show" did for dog shows. Although, I contend that "The House of Yes" accomplishes this parody in a vastly more ruthless and consistently incisive way than Christopher Guest could ever dream.The entire film is poking fun at all things trite, melodramatic, and self-serious about modern film and theater. From the narrative, the characters, and the setting, to the direction, cinematography, and dialog (especially the dialog), "The House of Yes" is not a film but a caricature of a film, adapted from a play that is the caricature of a play. Anyone who has read or seen a few modern plays will recognize the stilted, stylized dialog and the actors' artificial, super-sincere interpretations. Wendy McLeod is no idiot; she has a post-graduate degree in theater from Yale. She's not writing this doggerel in earnest; she's making fun of other people's doggerel. I mean, c'mon.In less skillful hands, this film could easily have slipped into the realm of burlesque. If, for the sake of humor, you want to point out lots of annoying, hackneyed film and theater conventions, you run the risk of making an especially annoying film. But I think, for the most part, McLeod and Waters dodged this bullet. Not every line in the film hits the perfect chord, but a surprising majority of them do."The House of Yes" is not typical as a dark comedy, as a cult film, or as any other film genre. I've never seen anything else like it. If you're smart and have a wicked sense of irony, you'll love "The House of Yes." If you can't recognize a joke without a laugh track, I recommend "There's Something About Mary."