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The House of Yes (1997)

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78 comments in total

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Outstanding Small Film, 3 February 1999
Author: Fourstar from NYC

Don't listen to reviews that tag this movie with a "predictable" or "poor" ending - they don't get it. The House of Yes is a brilliant adaptation of stage-to-film. Although the entire movie takes place in a single location, there is no claustrophobic effect - the result of magical cinematography. Each room of the house reveals a new secret, a new mystery. The acting is superb, due to the amazing range of affect offered by Parker Posey, sharply contrasted by the humorously flattened delivery of the other cast members. The script is flawless, the directing well-hidden. Nothing about this movie screams "This is a cool indie film I just made" (hopefully a doomed approach to filmmaking) This is not Ben Affleck posing as a post-punk Dalai Lama in a waste of celluloid, but a true work of art. The incest issue is handled with grace, wit, and true affection, not to mention the laugh-out-loud black humor. It's one of my top ten, right up there with True Romance, Naked Lunch and Miller's Crossing. Again, don't fret over warnings about a predictable ending - the ending is not what it seems. Think about it.

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
One Screwed Up LOT, 6 April 2004

Author: bellhollow from Nashville, Tennessee

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This movie is about the games between twins and their incestuous relationship. The whole family is screwed up beyond repair. Everyone seems to have a really bad hang-up on someone. The banter among the siblings is hilarious and they set each other up as much as possible to keep their screwed up family ticking. And the family keeps on ticking. The acting is very good and the movie flows very quickly. The ending stays true to the insane qualities of the family. The reality of this is how would someone get away with murder without somebody asking? Either someone got away or they got murdered and that just makes me believe the family would be found out and all sent to the looney bin. Even if you don't like the subject matter, the movie works keeping the characters nutty as all get out. You should watch this.

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12 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
I will never read film reviews again!, 18 June 1999
Author: Jelly-4 from Baltimore, MD

This is the kind of movie that I would have ordinarily RUSHED to the movie theaters to see. It's got all the right elements: it's dark comedy, a great female lead, a bizarre storyline...Yet I read reviews that the movie disappoints so I was in no rush to see it. But I finally saw it last night and wow was it great! What terrific performances, esp. from Genevieve Bujold. Posey was as delightful as ever, and even Spelling was able to do a complete 180 in contrast to her usual Bev. Hills type. The dialogue was so witty yet dark. It's a two night rental so for the first time I think I'll see a movie twice in two days! I give this movie a 9 - I would give it a 10 if it weren't for the very predictable ending.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Parker Posey rules the screen!, 31 December 2003

Author: yossarian100 from usa

Doing a film adaptation of a play rarely works, but when it does, as it most assuredly does in this movie, the performances are overwhelming and intoxicating. Parker Posey's characterization will be forever burned into my memory. The House Of Yes is completely enjoyable, even startling, and is a 'must see' excellent piece of cinema.

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Wonderful, Altmanesque: Nashville meets 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, 6 May 1999

Author: Jared X from New York

A wonderful Altmanesque cross between Nashville and Come back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. This is one obsessive, compulsive, spread-eagled, dysfunctional play, extremely well written and very tight. Parker Posey's best performance yet and extremely well cast all around.

I can't recommend it highly enough. This is the kind of movie worth waiting years for!

Enjoy.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
House of Fun for the sick-minded and perverse, 27 January 2004

Author: Miles Keaton Andrew (miles@mkandrew.com)

The House of Yes is one of my personal favorites. Is it creepy? Yes. Is it funny? No - it's hysterical, at least to those of us accustomed to laughing at things you're not supposed to laugh about - like bizarre social taboo. Younger indie fans may not care for this flick, but The House of Yes is not to be compared with the likes of Chasing Amy. For Parker Posey fans, the film is apples to the oranges of Party Girl, Henry Fool, Clockwatchers, etc.

The House of Yes was adapted from Wendy McLeod's play, so it is a dialogue film with its own language - similar to the Coens' Miller's Crossing. As with Miller's Crossing, the snappy dialogue never misses. While watching The House of Yes, I've caught myself rewinding to catch a phrase I missed because I was still laughing a the preceding gag.

Facial closeups dominate this film, and for reason - the actors' expressions are more telling than the dialogue, delivered flawlessly by every member of the crew - looks you could spread onto a cracker, like when Mama (Bujold) warns her son Marty about Jackie-O's mental state: "I'm going to baste the turkey, and hide the kitchen knives."

The film's biggest surprise: Tori Spelling, as a prudish and naiive Pennsylvanian - perhaps her most believable role to date.

If there were a Cooperstown for comedic acting, this film alone puts Parker Posey into the Hall of Fame.

Highly recommended for the sick-minded and perverse.

Miles Keaton Andrew

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
A street car named Nasty, 5 January 2008

Author: onepotato2 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The house of maybe, 11 August 2003

Author: George Parker from Orange County, CA USA

In "The House of Yes" Posey plays a nut case who calls herself Jackie-O, dresses like Jacqueline Onassis, and likes to have incestuous liaisons with her brother while doing impromptu reenactments of the Kennedy assassination. A claustrophobic dark ensemble theatrical knock-off, this stagey flick relies on the nonstop repartee of its quirky characters for entertainment as it is devoid of just about everything we go to movies to see. People and talk is all you'll get with "The House of Yes" which squeaks by with a script just clever enough to shore up a marginal concept. Okay fodder for those into dark, sardonic, and misanthropic comedy. (B-)

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Drivel, 11 September 1999
Author: Tala-2 from US

Why is it that some users feel that people who don't like this movie are "inane babbling fools" or right-wingers? I am neither and I despised this film. I agree with the comment that the dialogue is not half as clever as it thinks it is--nothing the characters say is particularly noteworthy. Parker Posey is a talented actress but Jackie comes off like a young woman whose mental disturbance has been heightened by her family's indulgence. Put simply, she's a brat. I found myself sympathizing with Tori Spelling's character often. I was pleasant surprised by Ms. Spelling's capability in her role. All of the actors (except, perhaps, for Prinze) did well with what they were given, but what they were given isn't much.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Sick, not funny, 10 February 2002

Author: (lily_sanders@hotmail.com) from not specified

This movie was sick, not to mention completely unrealistic. Jackie-O would definitely be locked up at this point in time. There is no way the doctors who diagnosed her illness would let her roam free after she shot her brother! Despite the fact that Jackie O's lines were very well written and well delivered, I did not find any of this movie to be funny. I found the character of Jackie O to be very annoying. She is spoiled, and criticizes people she thinks are hicks, yet she's sleeping with her own brother. The whole time I was rooting for Lesly (Tori Spelling) to run away from there as fast as she could! It bothered me that she would sleep with Marty's brother, because I thought possibly they were writing one character who wasn't screwed up. Not to mention the fact that if a normal person found out their fiance was sleeping with his sister, they would dump the guy right there and leave. The mother was also not amusing because she allows this psycho (Jackie O) to continue with her behavior and doesn't even care. Although I know the writers were going for being shocking and portraying a very abnormal family, this movie was sick and not at all humorous. It's too bad I wasted 90 minutes of my day subjecting myself to these awful characters and ridiculous storyline. If the story had any chance of being amusing, the writers would have had Jackie O be the only abnormal character and have her imagining this whole "love affair" with her brother. Writing everyone crazy and weird was just too much.

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