Movie Reaction: The House

Formula: Casino / Sisters

I'll be straight with you. I have no special insight about The House. It isn't a film that requires one. It's a simple movie. The idea is that Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell, Kate and Scott, are the parents of a daughter, Alex (Ryan Simpkins), who gets into Bucknell. The scholarship they had lined up for Alex falls through and they have no back up plan. Scott's friend Frank (Jason Mantzoukas) convinces them to open a casino out of his freshly abandoned house (the result of his pending divorce). And that's pretty much it. There's some business about a local city councilman (Nick Kroll) who is the straw man villain and a local cop (Rob Huebel) investigating the casino. A mob boss too. That's just plot to fill time and give this some semblance of structure.

This is not a tight script. It's more of a heavily workshopped sketch that got ballooned out to fill 90 minutes. Some plot was thrown in at the beginning and end, but mostly, the idea is to fit in a bunch of jokes about a suburban illegal casino. Some of the jokes are good. Others aren't. Nothing lingers long enough to be a problem. That's kind of my biggest issue too. There's way more conflict than the movie needs and it's all half-baked. They introduce both a corrupt city councilman and a mob boss character to potentially be the main villain. They float the possibility that Mantzoukas' spending could be their undoing, or that the conflict could entirely be that Farrell and Poehler are sacrificing their relationship with their daughter for this scheme. Any of these things would've been enough to support the film. I wonder if, given the already short runtime, they just needed all that to fill time. It seems like the premise is joke-rich enough for that not to be the case.

The cast is overflowing with actors you will recognize, even if you actually know the names of only a couple of them. It's basically all the sketch performers they could find between the ages 30-50. Farrell, Poehler, and Mantzoukas at the center of the film deliver exactly what you want and expect them to. They get some big laughs. Poehler is the best of the three at being funny as an adult. Leslie Knope gave her a lot of practice. Ferrell is still trying to figure out how Frank the Tank can still work as he prepares to turn 50. It's an awkward transition, but he's making it work. Mantzoukas likes to play characters who I can't believe functioned in society for the 30+ years before the film begins. It works within the film though. I don't know what to make of Simpkins as the daughter. It's a limited role, but she fit comfortably with Poehler and Ferrell when she got the chance. I'd like to know if she's funny or just looked like she could be the daughter of those two.

The House is not designed to be a movie that you pick at. None of it is plausible, even within the world the film creates. It's good for some laughs, which is the height of its ambition. If you were a fan of Sisters, you are nearly guaranteed to be a fan of this. Sure, this film doesn't need to exist, but I don't mind that it does.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend