House Arrest

Grover Beindorf and his younger sister Stacy learn that their parents, Janet and Ned, plan to divorce after eighteen years of marriage. Convinced the adults are the ones behaving badly, the siblings lock them in the basement and refuse to let them out until they settle their differences. A classmate's suggestion sets the scheme in motion, and before long word spreads through school. Other teenagers dealing with their own unhappy homes follow the example and bring their parents to the same basement, turning the house into a makeshift holding place for adults.

Kyle Howard plays Grover, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Pollak as his parents, and Jennifer Tilly, Christopher McDonald and Sheila McCarthy among the credited cast of twenty-four. Harry Winer directed the film, released in the United States on August 14, 1996, with a screenplay by Michael Hitchcock; Judith A. Polene and Winer produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Rysher Entertainment. It runs 109 minutes.

House Arrest was the third of the five films Winer directed, following Mirrors and SpaceCamp. Its worldwide box office came to about 7 million dollars. Audiences rate it modestly: 5.8 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 9,800 votes, and 5.4 out of 10 on TMDB from 147 votes. A critics' rating of 3.8 out of 10 from 30 reviews places it below the IMDb audience score.