Cady's Take:

David Duchovny plays Tom Warshaw as he looks back on his youth, in the year of 1973, the year he turned 13 (the age, according to adult Tom, that a boy becomes a man). Tom lives in a walkup apartment in the heart of Greenwich Village with his widowed mother, played by Tea Leoni (Mrs. Dochovny). For an after-school job, he makes meat deliveries for a local butcher with his mentally challenged janitor pal (Robin Williams) and he's got a puppy-love crush on a pretty classmate (Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin, the movie is full of nepotism).
Oh yeah, and a relationship forms between Tommy and a woman he calls Lady who is imprisoned in the Women's House of Detention, the "House of D." Lady, played by the recording artist Erykah Badu, becomes the only stabilizing force in Tom's life.
Basically, my mind was reeling at the absurdity of it all. The movie is boring and plagued with a ludicrous plot. The acting is HORRIBLE, especially Robin Williams who was equipped with a set of prodigiously false teeth, matched with a performance that’s even less real. This film was an absolute Disaster with a capital D. Stay as far away as possible from this “House” as possible!

It is virtually impossible to review a movie as bad as "House of D". It is ridiculous, overly-sentimental, over-written, over-acted, and under-developed. How it can be all of those things at once is still a mystery to me. The one and only bright spot in the entire movie is young Anton Yelchin, who plays the main character Tommy as a young boy (and by David Duchovny, screenwriter and director of House of D as an adult).

I suppose House of D is intended to be a coming-of-age tale but quite frankly I felt this movie was incredibly patronizing. Movies are supposed to illuminate themes and ideas through acting, directing, cinematography, music, and a host of other mediums within the film. House of D explains absolutely everything that happens. When Tommy has an epiphany as a child, older Tommy explains the epiphany in the next scene. Unnecessary and insulting to the audience.

I see where this movie wanted to go. I honestly do. Unfortunately the roundabout route that it took not only results in us hopping off of the journey long before it ends, but the journey itself ends somewhere it should not and could not possibly have imagined for itself.

Honestly, I would rent anything other than House of D this weekend. Shield your eyes from the disc jacket at the video store and walk quickly past.