It might seem smart to brag about writing a movie in six days if that movie received great reviews. However, doing the same for a film that’s been slammed by critics across the country doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Still, that’s the scenario David Duchovny faces with his writing/directorial debut of House of D. This bungling coming-of-age story suffers from stilted dialogue, cliché subplots, unbelievable characters and uneven pacing with everything from predictable scenes to totally implausible ones.

Tom Warshaw (Duchovny) starts the movie as a painter in Paris who is looking back at his childhood. The film then flashes back to Tommy (Anton Yelchin) as a young boy living in 1970s Greenwich Village.

Duchovny was gracious enough to agree to an interview to talk about his film, in which he plays the leading role. “I knew I couldn’t get anyone in my role that would affect the financing better than me because it wasn’t flashy enough,” he said. “I was also on set, and I knew the character from writing it.”

Tommy wants to be a typical kid, but doesn’t find it easy. His father is dead, and his mother (Téa Leoni) is so depressed Tommy spends most of his time making sure she doesn’t commit suicide. Yet seconds later Tommy is outside acting like a 10-year-old goofball instead of a 13-year-old forced to deal with such grave issues. His character never strikes an emotional arc that resonates.

Then there’s Tommy’s mentally handicapped friend, Pappass, played way over the top by Robin Williams. Pappass rides around on a bike acting like a comedic nerd instead of a mentally challenged person.

Trying to buy into all of this gets more complicated with the introduction of Lady (Erykah Badu), a prisoner held in the top floor of an aging detention center (the D part of the title). Lady sees Tommy hiding a box with money he’s saving for a bike. She talks to him and becomes his mentor whenever he stands under her window and asks for advice.

“When I was creating that relationship I wanted it to be mythical,” explained Duchovny, “a knight, and a lady in a tower, and he’s come to release her and she’s going to fulfill him by giving him her love. Obviously it’s not a sexual thing, but I wanted it to be a fairy tale in a way, about enchantment and power.”

Although Badu’s soulful Allman Brothers tunes are pleasant to hear, this entire subplot just doesn’t work. “She empowers him to run, although she must lie to do it,” said Duchovny. “I like a concept where you have to lie in order to tell the truth, and he does it with Pappass on the bike.”

Badu and Tommy speak to each other like there’s no city noise below the Greenwich Village building. He returns again and again to put money in this box and barely hides it in a hole right in front of druggies and street people who hang around the detention center, yet no one ever steals it. How realistic is that?

Téa Leoni effectively shows the tragedy in her character’s suffering, but one wonders all the way through the movie why she never reaches out to help her son. Duchovny, who directed his real-life wife in this role, stated, “She was nervous because she didn’t want to screw up my movie, but I said it’s not possible. I had directed her before in an X-Files that I wrote and directed."

Duchovny fans will never forget him as the idiosyncratic agent Fox Mulder in X-Files. His voice is so distinctive that even talking to him in an interview it’s hard to remember he’s not really Mulder.

“I hope to change that,” Duchovny said with a warm laugh.

What was that entire X-Files experience like for Duchovny? “To me that was the best that television can be, the best production, the best story telling -- it was comedy, horror thriller, character, love. I don’t know of another show that held it all. I’m happy to be associated with it,” he said.

Fans want to know if Duchovny will return to the role. “It appears we’re going to do another one. Both Gillian Anderson and I want to do the movie,” he said. “I would say early next year when Chris (Carter) writes the script and Fox green lights it, we’ll be shooting it.”

After calling House of D a “journey that makes you feel funny, sad and hopefully at the end makes you feel resolved in some way,” Duchovny explained, “That’s the essence of watching drama.”

I applaud Duchovny for his versatile efforts, but maybe he was just too close to the project to be objective. To me, the film felt rushed, and none of its elements ever fully developed. Like many of Duchovny’s fans, I’ll look forward to the new X-Files.

(Released by Lions Gate Films and rated “PG-13” for sexual and drug references, thematic elements and language.)