THE HOUSE OF YES (Miramax) Starring: Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze Jr., Genevieve Bujold. Screenplay: Mark Waters, based on the play by Wendy MacLeod. Producers: Beau Flynn and Stefan Simchowitz. Director: Mark Waters. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, sexual situations, violence) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Norman Rockwell would not approve of what the movies are doing to Thanksgiving. Once upon a time, the fourth Thursday in November was the place where Americana accumulated: loved ones, football games, a golden roasted bird and pleasant conversation. That was before the idea of a stable, happy family became tres declasse. A couple of years ago, director Jodie Foster depicted a Midwestern family dissolving under the stress of being HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. This fall, no fewer than three new releases -- THE ICE STORM, THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS and THE HOUSE OF YES -- are turning Turkey Day into Dysfunction Junction.
At least Mark Waters, screenwriter and director of THE HOUSE OF YES, seems to understand that the recrimination-filled holiday gathering has already become a film cliche. THE HOUSE OF YES is a black comedy not at all concerned about making its family feuds a touch surreal. Those feuds involve the Pascal clan of Washington, D.C., and they take place on Thanksgiving day 1983. The year is significant because it marks the 20th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, a date which holds even more significance for the Pascals than for most Americans. You see, it was on November 22, 1963 that Papa Pascal disappeared never to be seen again, cementing the fixation of a daughter known as Jackie-O (Parker Posey) with the widowed First Lady. Jackie is equally obsessed with her twin brother Marty (Josh Hamilton), who shakes up the family by bringing home his fiancee Lesly (Tori Spelling). While Mother (Genvieve Bujold) doesn't try at all to make Lesly feel at home, and younger brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.) tries a bit _too_ hard, Marty's attempt to find a normal life begins to collapse under the weight of family secrets.
Waters adapted THE HOUSE OF YES from a play by Wendy MacLeod, and you can hear the theatrical roots in every line of dialogue. Posey, Prinze and Bujold exchange clipped quips with the practiced air of a company in mid-run, lines building on top of one another at a dizzying pace. Waters' direction also tends towards the conventional, usually holding the speaker in medium shot then shifting immediately to the next speaker.
Ordinarily, a production this uniformly stagy would feel forced and awkward on the screen, but not THE HOUSE OF YES. As it turns out, this is a story of overly dramatic people living a self-conscious soap opera. Jackie-O performs every minute of every day, dominating the Pascal household like a hammy actor dominates the stage, while her mother glides in and out of rooms like a condescending WASP matriarch from central casting. Appropriately enough (if unexpectedly), Tori Spelling delivers the film's most naturalistic performance; the rest of this clan is like the Addams family, so immersed in their own singularly demented world that they don't even see anything out of the ordinary. The script also keeps the wicked humor coming so regularly that you may not notice the arch deliveries (or at least not mind them). The dialogue is fast, funny and quirky enough to defuse some touchy subject matter. For most of the film's running time, Waters refuses to treat the Pascals' family skeletons as tragedies.
It's late in the film when THE HOUSE OF YES takes its most ill-advised turn, going exactly the somber and serious route it had so carefully side-stepped. The last shot in particular seems to ask for a careful psychological analysis, potentially rendering Jackie-O as a guiltless, misunderstood victim. It's a jarring miscalculation which takes a satire of dysfunction dramas and turns it into something which leaves a dysfunction drama taste in your mouth. THE HOUSE OF YES should have stuck with what it was doing best: providing an alternative Thanksgiving meal, something salty and bitter without a trace of saccharine.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 family dinners: 7.
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