The House of Yes 

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Depicting madness without making your audience crazy is always a tough tightrope to walk—in Wendy MacLeod's "The House of Yes," Parker Posey has to do just that, balancing her distinctly sane sense of humor with a jittery instability that is the mark of someone who really should be in a hospital. She is the best thing about the movie, a bolt of energy through every scene, carrying the rest of the laconic characters on her back like a sack of drugged cats.

"The House of Yes," however, has bigger problems than she can deal with. Adapted directly from MacLeod's stage play of the same name, there is an inherent sterility to the surroundings that never lets us identify with any of these wooden wackos. The story is simple enough: Marty (Josh Hamilton) brings his fiancee (Tori Spelling) home to meet the family for Thanksgiving. Waiting for him is his twin sister (Posey), dopey little brother (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), and scary mom (Genevieve Bujold). The two twins have many secrets among them, one of them being pretty obvious from the get-go, and everyone else seems to have the absurd result of 25 years of cabin fever. The dialogue is funny, often wonderful, but one can't shake the feeling that this thing would be better on the stage. Translating from the theater to Hollywood is always an iffy proposition; people just don't talk the same way, and there is a claustrophobia that sets in with not enough change of scenery. "House of Yes" errs on both counts, featuring plot twists that are more macabre than interesting, and an ending that is more "inevitable" than "climactic."

—Ian Williams

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