Dour, dry Duchovny's directorial debut is more weepy than creepy, a conventional coming-of-age story that flashes back to 1970s New York City.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2005

It's a fable that's too fabulous by half.

| Apr 29, 2005

Because dark secrets always summon flashbacks, the telling of Tom's plunges us back to Greenwich Village, circa 1973. Sideburns sprout, classic rock proliferates and lapels run amok. Then the horror really begins.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 29, 2005

The kind of personal film that fails in a way that makes your teeth ache. It's obviously a labor of love on the part of its first-time writer-director, but as a coming-of-age memoir it lacks charm, originality and taste.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 29, 2005

In need of a tighter narrative and, more importantly, a raison d'tre.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 29, 2005

As soon as Williams enters, simpering, this is a character that we wish would die a horrid death, or at least disappear. That's a problem Duchovny can't overcome.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 29, 2005

House of D dawdles along as the sort of 1970s-inflicted coming of age reminiscence that feels like the unprocessed ramblings of its creator.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 29, 2005

Despite a weak foundation built with coming-of-age clichs, House of D almost works as a melancholy look back.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 29, 2005

The year is young -- there is a movie featuring Paris Hilton due soon -- but it's hard to imagine anything in 2005 being more excruciating to endure.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 29, 2005

The movie never gels. It lies there, flat and unconvincing, with little spurts of florid melodrama.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Apr 28, 2005

House of D is the kind of movie that particularly makes me cringe, because it has such a shameless desire to please.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 28, 2005

The film never sidesteps the puddles of self-indulgence that soil many feature-length directorial debuts, particularly those of an autobiographical nature.

| Original Score: C | Apr 28, 2005

What should be a 10-minute anecdote turns into a sluggish and overly sentimental tale that won't hold the interest of anyone outside Duchovny's immediate family.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 28, 2005

A little more literary than lifelike, House of D is a story that feels too pat, and too perfect, for its own good.

| Apr 28, 2005

Less successful with these sentimentally embroidered holy fools and fairy-tale damsels than with its nicely drawn relationship between Tommy and Melissa.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 28, 2005

Goes from bad to unbearable in a single scene.

| Original Score: .5/4 | Apr 28, 2005

Duchovny delivers a clearly heartfelt but terminally mawkish and awkward directorial debut.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2005

The movie presents Tommy's crisis and its resolution back-to-back, with little to suggest the years of damage that would require such a feel-good epilogue.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 19, 2005

It's unfortunate not so much for Duchovny as it is for the viewer, who must endure a cloying, achingly precious coming of age story.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2005

In fact, it represents Duchovny as a capable writer and director with a promising career outside of the X-Files milieu.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 17, 2005