Advertising executive Daniel Miller (David Paymer) is forced to drive their family carpool when Mrs. Miller (Stellina Rusich) becomes ill. Daniel is in the middle of a huge advertising campaign for Hammerman's, a large chain of delis, but reluctantly take on the carpool duties. The carpool includes Daniel's two sons, Andrew (Mikey Kovar) and Bucky (Micah Gardener), two local ladies; Chelsea (Colleen Rennison) and her older sister, Kayla (Rachael Leigh Cook), and local weirdo Travis (Jordan Warkol). Meanwhile, Franklin Laszlo (Tom Arnold) is the owner of a failing carnival out of desperation to keep his team of carnies and sideshow performers employed initiates a last ditch effort to raise capital by robbing a bank. Daniel stops at a local Hammerman's to get some pastries where by coincidence Franklin has also stopped off. Two gunmen, Neil (Ian Tracey) and Jerry (John Tench), proceed to rob the Hammerman's and through a series of misunderstandings off duty detective Lt. Erdman (Kim Coates) believes Franklin to be the robber and Daniel and the van full of kids become reluctant hostages to Franklin who makes it clear he has no intention of harming them and a chase around the city ensues.
Released during the mid-90s, Carpool marked the theatrical screenwriting debut of noted TV writer Don Rhymer who had worked on Evening Shade, Hearts Afire, and Fish Police just to name a few. The movie is directed by veteran comedy director Arthur Hiller, best known for films such as 1978's The In-Laws with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk and the George C. Scott fronted dark comedy The Hospital. Carpool was part of a wave of broad family focused comedy films released throughout the 90s trying to tap into the zeitgeist that made Home Alone so successful often to diminishing returns. While Carpool was a financial failure on initial release and was skewered by critics, it's honestly an okay movie for what it is.
From the get go with its zippy soundtrack and exaggerated line deliveries the movie makes it pretty obvious this will be a broad slapstick farce. David Paymer plays an exaggerated whiner in Daniel Miller who constantly bemoans he's going to miss his important businessy business meeting at his place of business in what's basically the typical "workaholic dad" trope to a "T". The movie does try to balance it out with Tom Arnold's Franklin as a counterpoint to Daniel where he's so focused on being fun he neglected his responsibilities and the movie seems like it's trying to find some middle ground between the two extremes rather than just say "Dad should blow off work to spend time with his kids", but the movie never really develops that and pretty much falls back on the standard. But plot isn't the primary focus of this movie and it's more a showcase for over the top vehicular stunts and slapstick and to the movie's credit it does deliver. While the humor of Carpool is very broad its actors are all delivering the maximum amount of effort with Paymer committing to the tightly wound workaholic and Arnold committed to his fun loving larger than life accidental robber/hostage taker and the two of them play off well against the assortment of kid characters along for the ride. Kim Coates and Rhea Perlman have some fun energetic deliveries as a detective and meter maid respectively who are chasing the group. As with many comedies there are some "of the time" gags but they're never brazenly tasteless and are just kind of there (certainly haven't aged as awful as similar gags from other films).
Carpool is the type of middle of the road comedy that isn't aggressively obnoxious but it's also not that far above average either. I happen to like Tom Arnold so his delivery and comedic style did work for me personally. The movie's only about 89 minutes (including credits) so it never overstays its welcome and in terms of kid shenanigans movies Carpool may not be one of the best, but it's nowhere near the worst either.
