The House of Yes (1997)

People are voting emotionally.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A mentally unbalanced young woman (Parker Posey) who thinks she is Jackie Kennedy flips into a murderous rage when her brother returns home to reveal he is engaged.Why does it always seem that Parker Posey never rises above a B-list actress? She is exquisite here, was great in "Waiting for Guffman", and is just a joy to watch. he should be in so many more high profile movies. Heck, I don't know what she does these days (perhaps she is on a show I don't watch).But anyway, what a dark, twisted and irreverent twist on the Kennedy assassination. While it should not be something to joke about, neither should mental illness or incest. And yet, this is what the film does, all together, and presents a very nice movie. Not laugh out loud, but just offbeat enough to be enjoyable for those who love subversion.

To the folks that think Ms Spelling did not turn in a good performance-I disagree. I was pleased with the drama she showed. She was still a young actress and has of course improved with age, but she was lithe and active and in this film I noticed she has the most perfectly formed hands and forearms of any actress on film. Not sure why I noticed this but if you watch again, look for this. She should use this feature to full effect. She also has a bit of a striking profile and eyes, similar to some other famous actors on stage. She could use her eyes to show more emotion. She showed her range to more effect when she was showing concern for the other characters. Parker Posey, of course, was in her full glory in this performance. She showed great skill with the acting process. If you listen to the film without watching the action, you see that she uses her voice to great effect. She truly stole this show. Ms Bujold of course exhibits great range of craft, so great to see her always. To top off the show, there is a cameo by a young Rachael Lee Cook. Fine performances by the men. Overall unique experience!

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 seems to one of those films that you're either going to love or hate. I happen to fall unapologetically into the former category, though I can easily see why others disagree. It's Whit Stillman meets Hal Hartley meets David Mamet meets "Fight Club" in its warped comedic sensibility, and if you're down with that...well, pleased to meet you.The film is based on Wendy MacLeod's stage play, and Mark Waters allows it to wear that on its sleeve. It's all about the dialogue, which isn't like anything what the characters would actually say, but it's hard to doubt that it's what they feel.If you like deadpan humor, you need to see this one. Oh yeah, and Parker Posey has never been more fun to watch.