Existing in the John Hughes Universe of Film, in which the children are smarter and physically stronger than the adults, the “hero” of the film is Grover (Kyle Howard) who lives in a town named Defiance (that's deep, man) and realizes his parents, played by Jaime Lee Curtis and Kevin Pollak, are separating and decides the best remedy for the situation is to trick the dimwitted adults into a locked basement where they can stew and sort out their problems. These elements, with the right cast and a good script by someone like Robert Smigel, might have made a cute six-minute sketch on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. But since the film has a hundred additional minutes to kill, it pads its threadbare concept a little.

So Grover tells his buddy Matt (Mooky Arizona ... no, really, the actor’s name is Mooky Arizona) that he has locked his parents in the basement and Matt (who, if I didn’t mention it already, is played by a kid named Mooky Arizona) decides he should lock his parents down there too. You know how these fads at school start, one kid does it and then they all want to. Totally how slap bracelets happened in my elementary school. So soon three couples and one single mother are barricaded beneath Grover’s living room. That’s when Grover’s plans, and the movie, begin to turn sour.

I’d like to focus more on the career of one Mooky Arizona, but his IMDb page is frustratingly vague. Sadly, Matt was the final role in Mooky’s grand two-film career. There are plenty of other more significant names in HOUSE ARREST, all of whom have continued with successful careers, including Jennifer Tilly, Wallace Shawn, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Christopher McDonald, and Ray Walston. Was Mooky scapegoated because of HOUSE ARREST's failure?

I’d blame the problems on the premise, which asks us to care about the morons in the basement and their overly emotional jailer children. Let’s face it; in a movie like this there is a snowball-in-hell’s chance that the film WON’T end with reconciliation, and to make matters worse, Grover has finally learned the valuable (and realistic) lesson that he is not to blame for his parents’ failure in marriage when -- poof! magic! -- they are back together. I realize films aimed at younger audiences often include morals; but what are we telling our nation’s youth when we give them morals in direct conflict to the happy endings we present them? If anyone had seen this movie when it was released, they would have been awfully confused, not to mention ripped off.