The House Review

The House is another one of those typical party-like movies where some situation has people go against their better judgment because it's important for some reason. There's even less than the usually required persuasion to get things going and that's how everything kicks off.

A mother and father to a young potential college kid are trying their best to pay for the education after an area scholarship is removed. They join forces with their wacky neighbor and after a night in Vegas decide that starting their own secret casino would be a good solution to their problems.

It starts off as a fun and secret little spot to get certain people from the area together and slowly evolves throughout. It was actually impressive to see it grow though that wasn't entirely the point what they attempting to do. The characters continue to grow more outlandish over the course of the movie to the point of it being rather silly and strangely violent towards the end.

There wasn't anything too wild about the look of The House with shots usually being rather plain. The design of the house was interesting though I could see this was a very focused shoot in that it really only had the one key location. Generally the concept of the plot made sense, but I'm not entirely sure the execution worked. I did get some laughs out of it, yet like the rest of the audience was also quiet for a fair bit of the film.

It wasn't entirely bad and maybe worth a couple watches down the road though nothing I'd suggest going out of your way to view. Will Ferrell feels like the same character as his dark "Gator" from The Other Guys whereas Amy Poehler is a bit too strange. I did however enjoy Jason Mantzoukas's wild neighbor Frank that helped them though he's the same as his other roles.

The Conclusion

The House is a decent comedy while often wasting its strong cast. That aside, I did get some laughs and if you don't care where the narrative falls out it works out alright. It didn't look great to view and was painfully average yet almost below that to a degree.

You'll get some laughs as it is a focused comedy, yet I still expected more out of it. The House works at times, at least in the concept with execution that doesn't hit for the most part.

The House Review at Theater with Standard Viewing

Rating Overall: 5.0