Carpool

A stressed advertising executive, Daniel Miller, is set to give a career-defining presentation on the morning his wife falls ill, leaving him to drive his two sons and several neighborhood children to school. A stop for doughnuts turns into a robbery, and then into something stranger: Franklin Laszlo, the struggling owner of an amusement park who has been considering a holdup of his own, takes the van and everyone in it. What follows is a day-long chase across Seattle, with the police in pursuit and the children warming to their captor more than to Daniel.

Arthur Hiller directed the film, the seventeenth of seventeen features listed for him, following The Babe. Don Rhymer wrote the screenplay, and Arnon Milchan and Michael G. Nathanson produced. Tom Arnold plays Franklin and David Paymer plays Daniel, with Rhea Perlman, Rod Steiger, Kim Coates and Rachael Leigh Cook among a credited cast of 27.

Made for about 17 million US dollars and released in August 1996, the film runs 89 minutes. On IMDb it holds 5 out of 10 from around 5,700 votes, while on TMDB it has 5.2 out of 10 from roughly 93 ratings. A critics' rating of 2.8 out of 10 from 22 reviews places it below even those modest audience scores, suggesting a broad family comedy that found little favor on either side.