text: Unfortunately House of D is just awful, with a ridiculous plot, terrible writing, some mediocre acting, and in fact just about everything else about it is sub-par.<br /><br />Tom flees NYC to somehow survive as a lone child in Paris, and manages to convince the beautiful Parisian girl he eventually marries that he's French, despite a poor grasp of her language. She's shocked when years later he reveals his "secret" to her! Riiiight!<br /><br />He then "gifts" his tale of woe to his own son, and who we are expected to believe thinks that's just the greatest birthday gift a dad can give his 13 year old boy. If only such things were so easy! David Duchovny miscasts his own wife Tea Leoni in the role of his mother and strikes out yet again. Leoni makes me laugh as a comic but she's just plain wrong for this role.<br /><br />One of the problems with that is none of the characters are sympathetic. I just didn't give a damn what happened to any of them. I did rather hope that Robin Williams and his trademark "child in a grown-up's body" schtick would fall into a Village pothole, but alas, it was not to be and we had to endure his simpering performance all the way.<br /><br />Anton Yelchin and William's daughter Zelda were not bad, but I suspect the rave reviews others are giving them is simply because they weren't anywhere near as bad as everyone else in this movie. They weren't great, let me put it that way.<br /><br />There are so many silly and contrived aspects to this film - Erykah Badu, the bicycle, the Catholic school and it's staff of morons, the conveniently stupid characters, etc - that this review would go on for ever, so I'll just finish up by saying that House of D is a very poor movie, and I'm almost embarrassed for Duchovny.<br /><br />The thing that really annoys me is how I was so strongly encouraged by online "friends" to see this that I traveled a long way to do so.<br /><br />I would not have been so annoyed that this movie is so bad if I'd just wasted a couple of hours down at the local movie theater, but instead I lost a whole day, and discovered that my so-called "friends" are either stupid or dishonest, because this is an awful movie!