House Broken (2009)

Sadly Over-hyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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.

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!!

These two spoiled and jobless Southern Cal dudes (Hansen and Stone), each brother about twenty-five or so, are left home alone while their parents (DeVito and Sagal) take a vacation from them. They're mentally blank to the point at which they don't know that you must pay an electric bill or the power goes off, see? So they visit a supermarket where a girl friend of theirs (Crosby) works. The manager happens at the moment to be finishing the arrangement of a large plate of sampler cheese cubes with toothpicks stuck in them. The manager is what they would call a real douche bag. He insults everyone freely, calls Crosby "tits" and "C cup." He fires Crosby in front of the two dudes, saying, "She stepped outside her box, and by 'box' I mean vagina, get it?" So the taller of the two dudes yanks down his phat pants, hops up on the table, plops his bare rear end onto the platter of cheese, wriggles his behind down into them for what seems like several geological epochs, and says something like, "How do you like THOSE cheese cubes?" The other dude picks up a cheese cube, pops it into his mouth, and comments on their savory quality.Now, if you think this is funny, this is your movie.The whole movie is like that. It does its best to be outrageous -- and I guess it IS that -- in an attempt to imitate the Farrelly brothers' successful earlier efforts by coupling it with the cash-generating "Home Alone," but it does so with witless abandon. The S word is used freely. So is the D word and the F bomb and the B word. ("B" as in, "blue B***s," which Danny DeVito, a man over fifty, claims to be suffering from.) The writers manage to avoid the Q word and the X word and the Z word but only because there aren't any that are dirty, unless you count "quoit", which I'm tempted but unwilling to do.What? You say that's not funny enough? Okay. How about this. One of the brothers is sleeping and the other sneaks up and begins to rub a plastic phallus around his face. The sleeping dude yawns and the dude who is awake inserts the phallus between his teeth. The sleeper wakes up, the other dude hides the phallus behind his back, and -- the payoff? "Did you just put something in my mouth?" "No." That's the joke, the whole joke, and nothing but the joke -- the joke being that there really is no joke. The scene has no point, no capsheaf. The minute or so in which we see plastic on nose is itself supposed to keep you laughing. The writers haven't bothered to build the scene to any sort of peak or climax. They don't think you care. They think your sensitivity is that of a bowling ball, rather like the two airheads who star in this offal.If it does, if you even smile at this description of the incident, this is the movie for you.

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!