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Carpool
Warner Bros. // PG // February 10, 2004
List Price: $14.97 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"You kidnapped me, you...you forced me to go to the bathroom with you, you...you...you flash-froze me, you drove me through a mall, and you didn't even have the courtesy of being armed and dangerous?!?"
"I know, but it was fun, wasn't it?"
No, not really.
Arthur Hiller is the director behind the immensely successful Love Story, the 1970 film that helped propel Paramount from dead last in the studio race to the number one slot. He helmed Silver Streak, another box office smash that would set the stage for a series of comedies pairing Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. His filmography spans five decades and includes dozens of movies and television series. Continuing to direct while well into his 70s, Hiller's last two films were the Razzie nominated Burn Hollywood Burn and Carpool, which probably would have been nominated if anyone had seen it. Carpool marked the culmination of America's stillborn love affair with Tom Arnold, when it and The Stupids were released on consecutive weekends in August 1996, neither managing to make any inroads at the box office. Arnold stars as Franklin Laszlo, whose carnival is on the verge of financial ruin. Determined to keep his small army of carnies and sideshow acts well-fed, Frankie sets out to raise some additional capital. While waiting for the bank to open so he can rob it, Franklin strolls into the local Hammerman's Gourmet-to-Go for breakfast. Although Hammerman's doesn't have any of the doughnuts he was hoping to find, it does have two robbers, and Frankie finds himself caught in the crossfire. He does his best to thwart the theft, but things go awry when a cop inadvertently bursts onto the scene. The well-meaning, exceedingly polite Frankie winds up holding a sackful of cash and a gun to a hostage's head, tearing off towards no place in particular in his victim's minivan. Riding shotgun is Daniel Miller (David Paymer), an uptight ad exec who's slated to make a presentation for Hammerman that afternoon with a $10 million account at stake. Miller's already running late for work, having been stuck shuttling his two sons and three other neighborhood kids to school, and being held at gunpoint by a reluctant criminal threatens months of hard work. Chased by the cops and a pair of vengeful thugs, Frankie and company nearly wind up in your grocer's freezer, careen through a mall in a Hair-in-a-Can-doused van, dodge a rocket-powered meter maid, and somehow fail to elicit a single laugh.
Carpool flounders in pretty much every possible respect, with uninspired direction, a clichéd script, a low-rent score, poor pacing, and a questionable cast. It tries to be a manic comedy, but without any humor or energy under the hood, Carpool just feels sluggish and excruciatingly dull. It should've spent more time in the editing room: if Carpool had been tightened and the runtime lopped down to 75 minutes or so...well, it still wouldn't be any good, but at least it'd be fifteen minutes shorter. It's a slow-moving flick with several sequences that drag on far too long, relentlessly trying to mine humor from a barren wasteland of comedy. Although I'm not ashamed to admit to liking many, many dumb comedies, I don't find the repeated mention of hemmorhoids, heat-packin' senior citizens, or extended urination to be inherently funny. The obvious jokes flop, but there are quite a few lines where I couldn't tell if they were intended to get a laugh or not. Kayla (Rachael Leigh Cook) spouts off something about her mother just having gotten a breast reduction. It's just...mentioned. No setup, no punchline, no mugging for the camera... Is it a gag? It'd be baffling if I cared enough to invest any thought in it, and there are a number of quasi-jokes like that in the movie. I wasn't being entirely truthful when I said I didn't so much as chuckle once throughout the entire course of the movie, though. There's a quick bit right before the credits roll that doesn't have anything to do with the basic premise of the movie, and though that snippet gets tiresome quickly, I have to admit that that its opening moments made me laugh out loud. Not enough to warrant wading through nearly an hour and a half to get there, of course. The basic premise is awfully generic, to the point where I'm convinced I've seen at least part of Carpool before, but I can't remember when or in what capacity. It also poses frequently asked questions like "will the workaholic father learn from his freewheeling sidekick that family is more important than work?" that you'll just have to watch the movie to answer. (Everyone has a groovy time with Laszlo.) The acting of the kids is spotty (my bias towards Rachael Leigh Cook is litigiously well-documented, so I clearly won't be saying anything negative about her small role), but they become almost inconsequential once taken hostage, so at least they're only able to be particularly grating during their unnecessarily lengthy introductions. Although Tom Arnold is typically a punching bag for reviewers, I don't really have a problem with him as an actor or a person, and I think he did the best anyone realistically could with the material. These sorts of Toys R Us Kids roles seem to suit him.
I could keep going, but I've spent more time watching and writing about Carpool than the movie really deserves. Chuck Jones fans may have been keeping an eye on this release just for an animated Warner short. The movie was paired theatrically with "Superior Duck", featuring Daffy Duck as a costumed crusader and a brief cameo by Superman, but the short hasn't been included with this DVD release. Actually, there's really nothing on this DVD aside from the flick itself.
Video: Nearly as unremarkable as the movie is its 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. There's little in the way of fine detail, and though blacks are reasonably inky, shadows have a tendency to look kind of murky and smeared. I usually think of movies like this as boasting a particularly bright, vibrant palette, but the colors in Carpool generally seem subdued. The source material used for this transfer is in decent shape, with few speckles and no noticeable damage. There's something off about the unstable appearance of the image at the beginning of chapter 20, but I can't tell at a glance if it's an authoring problem or a well-worn source. The quality overall is better than I'd expect from an appearance on cable, but not by much.
Audio: The Dolby Digital stereo surround track (192Kbps) isn't that great either. The matrixed surrounds are used sparsely, with the majority of the action anchored front and center. The low-end is thin, and dialogue tends to have a shrill, strained quality. The score is extremely bland, with several cues sounding like someone downloaded MIDI files of Katrina and the Waves and piped them into the movie, closer to preset songs on a Casio keyboard than a traditional score. There are only a couple of recognizable licensed songs -- Blondie's "One Way or Another" and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated", the latter seeming particularly appropriate for such a dull movie. The producers certainly got their money's worth out of the Ramones, squeezing that song into the movie three separate times.
A stereo surround French dub has also been provided, alongside closed captions and Spanish subtitles.
Supplements: There are no extras whatsoever, not even a trailer. The disc features a set of 16x9 enhanced menus, and the movie's thirty chapter stops are listed on the interior flap of the keepcase.
Conclusion: A warmed-over, mediocre comedy with a wholly unremarkable release on DVD, I'd recommend passing on Carpool. Skip It.
Related Links: Although Warner didn't bother to include it on this DVD, they have a tiny Quicktime trailer for the movie on their website.
"I know, but it was fun, wasn't it?"
No, not really.
Arthur Hiller is the director behind the immensely successful Love Story, the 1970 film that helped propel Paramount from dead last in the studio race to the number one slot. He helmed Silver Streak, another box office smash that would set the stage for a series of comedies pairing Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. His filmography spans five decades and includes dozens of movies and television series. Continuing to direct while well into his 70s, Hiller's last two films were the Razzie nominated Burn Hollywood Burn and Carpool, which probably would have been nominated if anyone had seen it. Carpool marked the culmination of America's stillborn love affair with Tom Arnold, when it and The Stupids were released on consecutive weekends in August 1996, neither managing to make any inroads at the box office. Arnold stars as Franklin Laszlo, whose carnival is on the verge of financial ruin. Determined to keep his small army of carnies and sideshow acts well-fed, Frankie sets out to raise some additional capital. While waiting for the bank to open so he can rob it, Franklin strolls into the local Hammerman's Gourmet-to-Go for breakfast. Although Hammerman's doesn't have any of the doughnuts he was hoping to find, it does have two robbers, and Frankie finds himself caught in the crossfire. He does his best to thwart the theft, but things go awry when a cop inadvertently bursts onto the scene. The well-meaning, exceedingly polite Frankie winds up holding a sackful of cash and a gun to a hostage's head, tearing off towards no place in particular in his victim's minivan. Riding shotgun is Daniel Miller (David Paymer), an uptight ad exec who's slated to make a presentation for Hammerman that afternoon with a $10 million account at stake. Miller's already running late for work, having been stuck shuttling his two sons and three other neighborhood kids to school, and being held at gunpoint by a reluctant criminal threatens months of hard work. Chased by the cops and a pair of vengeful thugs, Frankie and company nearly wind up in your grocer's freezer, careen through a mall in a Hair-in-a-Can-doused van, dodge a rocket-powered meter maid, and somehow fail to elicit a single laugh.  |
| Strangely, not part of Daniel's presentation for Hammerman's |
I could keep going, but I've spent more time watching and writing about Carpool than the movie really deserves. Chuck Jones fans may have been keeping an eye on this release just for an animated Warner short. The movie was paired theatrically with "Superior Duck", featuring Daffy Duck as a costumed crusader and a brief cameo by Superman, but the short hasn't been included with this DVD release. Actually, there's really nothing on this DVD aside from the flick itself.
Video: Nearly as unremarkable as the movie is its 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. There's little in the way of fine detail, and though blacks are reasonably inky, shadows have a tendency to look kind of murky and smeared. I usually think of movies like this as boasting a particularly bright, vibrant palette, but the colors in Carpool generally seem subdued. The source material used for this transfer is in decent shape, with few speckles and no noticeable damage. There's something off about the unstable appearance of the image at the beginning of chapter 20, but I can't tell at a glance if it's an authoring problem or a well-worn source. The quality overall is better than I'd expect from an appearance on cable, but not by much.
 |
| Stop, or my mom will...yeah, that's too obvious. Sorry. |
A stereo surround French dub has also been provided, alongside closed captions and Spanish subtitles.
Supplements: There are no extras whatsoever, not even a trailer. The disc features a set of 16x9 enhanced menus, and the movie's thirty chapter stops are listed on the interior flap of the keepcase.
Conclusion: A warmed-over, mediocre comedy with a wholly unremarkable release on DVD, I'd recommend passing on Carpool. Skip It.
Related Links: Although Warner didn't bother to include it on this DVD, they have a tiny Quicktime trailer for the movie on their website.
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