So I just finished watching a clip of a guy chasing his dog with random household items, and I immediately remembered about an old film I once saw. Several years back I did try and look it up but couldn't find it.
Here's what I remember:

I think the film was set in relatively modern times and if I had to guess, I would say it came out in the 80s/early 90s, though I'm not sure about that. It was about this guy who for some reason decided early in the film to take his family out of the city/town and go live in a jungle somewhere (amazon or somewhere similar). From what I can remember they managed to more or less replicate most of the urban conveniences they had initially left behind, and built quite a big house for themselves. An incredibly modern house given the circumstances. The guy might have been some sort of engineering/inventing wiz. At one point he even managed to build some sort of ice machine, and he went on a journey of some sort to show a local tribe a block of ice, which they would never have seen before. The only problem is that the ice melted along the journey, and he was really upset about that. I can't remember what happened after that or how it ended. For some reason I have an even more vague memory of them ultimately returning to civiliation, though it's possible that I didn't get to see the entire film, due to my bedtime :P

Maybe "Tempest", but I doubt it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084776/

Thank you! It immediately looked right, and the plot seems to fit perfectly. Don't think I'll watch the film again though - seems kinda depressing :-\

I agree, it was one of the reasons this movie didn't do very well, I think the message is a bit hard to grasp.