House Broken

Sam Harper's 'House Broken' is pointless venture, with nothing working on it's advantage. In order to enjoy his retirement, a father takes drastic measures to get his twenty something, slacker sons to move out and fend for themselves. Now does the idea excite you? It doesn't work for me, sorry!

The direction is bland, the camera-work is a mess. The acting is not great either, Danny DeVito is wasted, why did to something like this? Katey Sagal is bland. Ryan Hansen hams to the hilt. Skyler Stone is okay. Thomas F. Wilson has never been so unconvincing.

Skip this film, Thumbs Down!

In this very offensive and unsuitable for viewing film, Danny Devito and Katey Segal are the parents of two lazy-bottom young men. Devito retires from the Fire Dept after 25 years and, at that point, realizes how shiftless his kids are. Wife has been taking care of the them for years. So, Devito kidnaps his wife and takes the camper out of town, to stay until the young adult sons learn how to take care of themselves. Admittedly, there are a few laughs at the beginning. When the fire truck escorts newly retired Devito home, an energetic cheerleader-gymnast does handsprings right into the fire truck! In that same scene, the VERY challenged sons manage to turn the main water spout on full blast, shoving a young girl on a tricycle against a wall. But, not long after that, very offensive language and scenes start to add up and this viewer had to turn it off and pitch it into a waste basket. What a shame, since the premise was clever and Devito is always a funny, funny man. When a film advertised for general viewing should have been given an NC-17 rating, that's a big problem.

I bought this movie because I thought Danny DeVito would be in the lead role, as he was on the front of the DVD cover along with his name. But it turned out that this was just a teenage comedy, and not an impressive one at that, with Danny DeVito in a supporting role only.

The story is about two slacker sons, Quinn and Elliot, who live at home and is making their father's life miserable, especially after he retired from his work at the fire department. Coming up with a plan to teach his sons about life and responsibilities, the retired father and his wife go away camping and leave the sons to fend for themselves.

I clearly wasn't the target audience for "House Broken", because I found the type of comedy infantile and the story more annoying than interesting. As such, I didn't particularly enjoy this movie very much.

The bright points to "House Broken" were Danny DeVito, Katey Sagal, Matthew Glave and Thomas F. Wilson.

If you enjoy a good comedy, then "House Broken" is hardly the best of choices.

It does have its moments, let me tell you, it did draw one or two smiles from me, but the only saving grace of the movie is DeVito and he appears very little, and not even his appearance could actually make the movie good.

The movie tries to hard to emulate the old timey dumb movies(Which I also didn't like that much, but they were much better) like Dumb and dumber, The Naked Gun, Ace ventura, or the mockery movies like Scary Movies and such, but it fails misserably

I do know some wastoids that actually are useless and live with their parents until a very late age, but this movie's acting takes it to a dumb-but-not-funny levels.

The movie would be much better if the adults actually behaved like adults trying to get their kids to grow up, THAT would've given the movie a 5 star rating, but the fact that the mother is 10 times as childish as the kids, it is just not funny, IDK if with some other actress it would be better, but I doubt it

Overall it is full of nonsense, that is not actually funny, jokes that don't hit, namecalling that just make no sense, and garbage acting.

It feels like if american pie had a child with dumb and dumber and the child tried to emulate the parents but suck at it, overall, it is good for a first watch if you have absolutely nothing else to see, but opposite to what most other DeVito movies are, this one is not going to get a second run from most sane people.

Tom is retiring after 25 years at the fire department in a California town. He is looking forward to spending time with Mary, but his two lazy sons Quinn and Elliot are still living with him and he wants them out. Mary refuses to make them go because she so enjoys providing for their every need. And it's not that the boys are lazy. Quinn is a filmmaker who knows how to use computers to add lots of fancy features and edit. Elliot, who seems dumb, is actually the creative mind for his bother's business. So far, though, they only post on YouTube and they haven't made a dime. They worked at a car dealer once but hated it because of their need to be creative.

Tom buys an RV and kidnaps Mary, taking her to a remote cabin and locking her up. When she tries to escape, the situation upsets their neighbors who think Tom is abusing Mary.

The boys discover the hard way that they are on their own. What they don't know is that Tom has had video cameras set up so he can monitor what the boys are doing, and the frustrated Mary takes some comfort in being able to see her boys.

It takes them a while, but they eventually learn what it takes to cope on their own. Their loser friends including Shirtless Boy need a place to stay, and Sarah, the mail carrier who got fired for trying to be creative (and got fired from the grocery store for trying to be creative) also needs a room. And Elliot likes her. She's pretty in a nerdy way and wants to be a masseuse. Quinn likes Suzy next door, daughter of Tom's widowed and tough co-worker, who is gorgeous and an airhead, wants to be a cheerleader but can't quite master the moves.

The boys have room for one more renter. Several hilarious potential renters show up in response to an ad the boys don't remember placing. The first several wouldn't work at all, but Hector is perfect. Or so they think. And soon the boys learn just what responsibility means.

So will the boys really learn to cope on their own? Danny DeVito and Katey Sagal give their usual performances. I'm sure no one will mistake this for a quality production despite the presence of these two talented actors, but they do add something.

Regardless of what you might think of everything else, Matthew Glave is very good as the perfect--okay, not so-perfect--tenant.

I don't know anything about Caitlin Crosby, but she's adorable. She seems intelligent but it might be the glasses.

Even if this isn't a great movie, it is very funny, provided you like the loser party animal fratboy image and demented physical comedy. I wouldn't recommend it for family viewing because even cleaned up, it has some quite filthy humor. But it's good for some silly laughs.

Be sure to stay around for the outtakes. It appears everyone had fun making this movie. Some of the outtakes don't even appear to be bloopers because they were used, such as the woman at the power company dancing.

If you like movies about losers, this may be for you.