Metacritic reviews

The whole madcap production is at best faintly amusing, at worst, painfully protracted

Things might have been okay if this film had gone someplace, anyplace, but it stalls early, then coasts through an hour of minimally-amusing material before screeching to an amazingly improbable stop.

Carpool is affably stupid Saturday-matinee fare -- good for opiating the kids for a few hours -- but let's just say it's no Big Bully.

Arthur Hiller's pacing is crude, but that seems to be the point.

It's a shame Arnold is stuck on the loudmouth clod schtick, because there are moments he's downright pleasant on screen. But in Carpool, these moments are kept to a minimum.

Indifferently directed and almost aggressively tedious, we'd call it cliched if they'd even bothered getting the cliches right.

Nothing about the movie makes much sense.

Arthur Hiller, who last directed the sour "The Babe" -- not the one about that sweet pig -- finds even less to work with in TV veteran Don Rhymer's stupid screenplay.

Wide-eyed and mirthlessly peppy, Mr. Arnold soon wears out his welcome as a bumbling would-be bank robber who commandeers a group of young hostages.

Warner Bros. quietly releases Hiller's latest film, Carpool, without advance critics screenings, without more than a whisper of promotion, without warning or apology to the lost souls who might wander in to see it.