House Broken - Una Casa Sottosopra

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!

Now I have to admit that this is a lousy movie with a lousy concept. I am typing as I watch this. The awful thing is I am finding it reasonably funny. Now not Blazing Saddles funny but amusing in a really dumb sort of way. Danny De Vito has made so much better films than this and he is the best thing in it, even though he does not appear much. The guys who play the sons in this(I cannot even be bothered to find out who they are) do an OK job but only OK not great. The guys who play their friends cannot seriously be contemplating a film career based on this outing. The writing is poor and the direction is so-so. As I state in my summary it is a guilty pleasure watching this and I feel like it is sucking the intelligence out of me. But I cannot stop watching it. Sue me or Kill me now!!

After you've watched this movie, you can call it both ways, especially after Danny Devito's 2 sons, Ryan Hansen as Elliot, and Skyler Stone as Quinn, are done. Talk about what have to be the most nerdy, brainless, half-witted, clueless and screw-balled airheads - these 2 and their pack of equally dumb friends. Their girlfriends weren't much better either.

It was a pleasure, though, to see Danny DeVito once again. After all these years, he proves that he hasn't lost his touch, ever so excellent. That expression he has when arching his brow and puckering his lips, signaling he's about to drum up something, cracks me up still just as it did way back when he made Twins with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this movie, boy does he have a handful with his dysfunctional misfits, an airhead of a wife not willing to live without "her boys", a wacky neighbor in the persona of Tom Wilson (yes, the very same "Biff" from Back to the Future), and a firefighter friend he hires with a pet snake to scare off the Brady bunch (John Farley as "Nate").

But our hero, now ex-Fire Chief and Firefighter Captain, has no intention of spending his retirement accompanied by screwballs, be they his sons or not. Oh no! he has a whole plan drawn up to teach these guys to be men, and move on. Does he succeed? Well, you'll have to find out.

What I take exception to is the constant and varied sexual innuendos, not played down either - but really crass and crude. There were several moments where public references to both male and female genitalia were made; I do not see what this had to do with the plot, or how it contributed to the story, other than cheapening it unnecessarily. Lots of dildos illustrating their function - at one time, the elder plays at putting one in his brother's mouth while sleeping. There was a scene with a dummy which I thought sick and unnecessary, and the list goes on.

This, primarily, is what prompted my low score. It isn't a flick you'll want to watch with your family, especially not young kids. So if you watch this, make sure whomever is with you (if anyone) is mature enough and will not take undue offense at such portrayal of what nowadays is called 'humor'.

That being said, a few laughs and giggles are on the menu, tainted, sadly, with a lot of mindless humor and crude language/behavior.

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.

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.