BET THE `HOUSE' ON ARRESTING PERFORMANCES.

Byline: Michael H. Price Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

Jamie Lee Curtis, Jennifer Tilly, Kevin Pollak, Christopher McDonald and Wallace Shawn are altogether too fine a bunch of players to be wasting their artistry on some cutesy dysfunctional-family situation comedy.

But they are also working actors who must maintain a certain visibility in the commercial cinema. So, when committed to accept an assignment that veered perilously near the cheeky-and-cheery type, they took the line of hard resistance and transformed it into a fairly respectable ensemble comedy.

The concept in search of a story is called ``House Arrest,'' and its more thoughtful qualities belong, as well, to director Harry Winer and screenwriter Michael Hitchcock.

Basically, it's this: The kids get a canful of Mom and Dad's mutual antagonisms, so they just lock 'em up until they can sort out their differences. Then word gets out, and pretty soon the whole neighborhood's doing likewise.

It sounds insufferably cute, but once you get past the surface, there's a literate script, enacted with the good sense to pretend the experience is for real.

Curtis and Pollak are convincingly cast as parents whose announcement of a split provokes their kids to drastic measures. The less said, the better, about the shrill, know-it-all children (including Kyle Howard and Amy Sakasitz), but then the film does not dwell on juvenile shenanigans except when needed to bring about the plight of the parents.

The notion of a neighborhood populated wholly by dysfunctional families is the stuff of shallow TV-style comedy. ``House Arrest'' explains the desperation of this particular family well enough that it seems almost reasonable for the kids to imprison their parents.

Less sensible is the idea that other kids will follow suit, luring one bickering mom-and-dad team after another to the house with the barred basement and throwing the adults together under orders to reconcile.

But it is precisely that forced ``togetherness'' that enables these nifty players - Curtis, Pollak, Shawn, Tilly, McDonald and so forth - to get down to some ensemble-acting exercises that range from slapstick to theater of the absurd to something resembling primal-scream therapy. Curtis and Pollak, as the flagship couple, are particularly memorable, conveying realistically the plight of long-marrieds who still love each other but just don't ``like'' each other all that much.

Safely outside the makeshift prison, Ray Walston accounts for some delightful moments as a retired police chief who suspects something weird might be going on down the block.

Something weird, indeed. It's a case of a deficient ``high concept'' being transformed into a not-half-bad movie, simply because a team of superior talents found the challenge worth taking.

THE FACTS

The film: ``House Arrest'' (PG; mature themes, violence, rude language).

The stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Jennifer Tilly, Kevin Pollak, Christopher McDonald, Wallace Shawn.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Harry Winer. Written by Michael Hitchcock. Released by MGM/UA.

Running time: One hour, 48 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Kevin Pollak and Jamie Lee Curtis star in ``House Ar rest.''