OK, granted, this is a silly juvenile movie, but it has a nice underlying message. If you want something that is light and feel-good on a rainy day, this is a good pick. If you are intolerant of sophomoric, slightly gross-out humor, this is probably not for you.

Two blonde guys in their mid to late twenties still live with their parents somewhere in southern California. They are unemployed and have aspired to be independent filmmakers, but this does not provide much or any income. They are completely oblivious and have no responsibility whatsoever. Their friends are equally immature. After recently retiring as fireman, their father begins to notice his sons are complete spoiled brats (I wonder if he ever realized this before). He hits a breaking point after noticing they've drank nearly all his beer and their friend let the dog pee on the furniture without cleaning it. He then devises a plan to force them to grow up, so he packs the Winnebago and tell his wife they are going to breakfast, but is really taking her camping so she can't interfere. He turns off the utilities and takes all the food with him. What happens next is a rather unconventional ride but nonetheless entertaining.

Kudos go to Danny Devito, who plays the annoyed, recently retired fireman dad who must force his sons to grow up and move out, and to Katey Sagal, who plays the role of coddling mother perfectly.

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.

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.