The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 231 Days to go: 235
Movie #146: The House of Yes
The House of Yes is a tour de force of linguistic acrobatics, and Parker Posey is absolutely perfect in it. Honestly, I don’t know what more needs to be said on the subject, but I will do my best to elaborate.
As someone who goes bonkers for clever word play, there’s not much out there that does better than The House of Yes. Tricky banter is one thing, but this movie turns colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions inside out, takes literal interpretations of phrases to new heights, and operates at such a rapid fire pace that you could probably watch it half a dozen times before you caught the majority of the jokes. I’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times, and I’m still rediscovering jokes.
The House of Yes is the story of a brother and a sister — twins — who have a, shall we say, special bond. Posey is Jackie (everyone calls her Jackie-O because of a longstanding obsession with the Kennedys) and Josh Hamilton is Marty. Marty has been away in New York and is returning home to Virginia — right next door to the Kennedy compound there — for Thanksgiving in 1983, and he’s bringing a friend. The friend is his fiancée Lesly (Tori Spelling), who sets the family, especially Jackie-O, into a tailspin.
This is the movie that sold me completely on Parker Posey, forever and ever. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a national treasure who should be in every single comedy ever. She’s smart, witty, cheeky, sassy, and wry. She can be ironic or sincere, wide-eyed innocent or flamboyant villain. And she’s exactly what’s required for Jackie-O here, because she manages to simultaneously be off-putting and reassuring. She’s insane and manipulative, but you can see what others see in her, what draws them to her.
Marty, too, is many things. He clearly adores Lesly and their life together, but he falls quite easily into a rhythm with Jackie, bantering with her, teaming up on little brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.), and defending everyone to his mother (Genevieve Bujold). And you see, bit by bit, his resolve wearing down, his defenses against Jackie wearing thin. As the night plays out, things either start to fall apart or fall into place, depending on your perspective.
Tori Spelling is naturally the odd-man-out here, not at all capable of keeping up with the Pascal family. And maybe she got the job because it was produced by Spelling Films, but Lesly is supposed to be the odd-man-out. She’s not supposed to fit in. She’s supposed to be outmatched. It’s her innate differences from Jackie and from Marty’s entire family that make Lesly so attractive to Marty. He wants separation from all of that, or at least he thinks he does. In this way, Spelling fits her role quite well, even as you find yourself cringing at her awkwardness throughout.
Freddie Prinze Jr. is quite good as the bumbling, out-of-step younger brother to Jackie and Marty. He’s more earnest, more honest than those two, but still calculating and manipulative in his ways — a gift he no doubt got from his mother, who is the embodiment of a distant and withholding parent. She is very arch and very particular and she has no use for people who don’t belong. Next to Posey’s, I think Bujold’s performance of Mrs. Pascal is my favorite.
The story — and the memories of our players — blurs the lines between the death of the president and the departure of Mr. Pascal on the same day, between the hurricane years ago and the one on that night, between love of a sibling and love of a lover. It’s an intricate, perfectly assembled puzzle of crazy, and as it escalates, it all falls into place (or apart, depending on your perspective).
And it’s full of quotable moments, too.
Viable Option 