House Broken

Halarious! Non stop laughing and is exactly the type of movie you should watch if you want to laugh. Ignore all the sensitive comments.

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.

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.