Kindergarten Cop – 1990
Directed by Ivan Reitman
Written by Murray Salem and Herschel Weingrod & Timothy Harris
John Kimble (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a tough cop who has been following the trail of a drug kingpin for years. After finally tracking him down, Kimble finds that the only person that can testify against him is his ex-wife (Penelope Ann Miller). The problem is she has changed her name and moved to Oregon with her five year old son. With only the name of the child’s school to go by, Kimble must take on his hardest assignment yet in order to find the mother…become a kindergarten teacher!!!
OK, I can’t decide what this movie is. It’s either absolutely horrible, so bad that it actually becomes funny. Or the creators realized how badly they were mangling Arnold’s image and made the movie this funny on purpose. Either way this film is an absolute riot! I don’t want to give the creators too much credit, the sequences that are obviously meant as jokes, Arnold’s banter with his partner or the “cute” kids, are really not that funny. All the humor comes from his complete inability to act. Seeing Arnold attempt to emote and read actual lines must be seen to be believed. I really think the comedic highpoint comes when Arnold is in the shower singing:
<thick Austrian accent>
You best put on coat and hat!
And walk yourself to laundry mat!
You better scrub kitchen floor!
You ain’t going to rock ‘n roll no more!
Yakkity-yack! Don’t talk back!
DON’T TALK BACK!!!
</thick Austrian accent>
If they just kept it going with Arnold hanging with the kids and saying things like “We are going to play a game called ‘Who is your Daddy and what does he do?’” the movie would have been perfect. But it’s full of unnecessary plot and violence. We can’t go ten minutes without the “danger music” cutting in and going to scene reminding us that there is a drug lord out to kidnap a little boy and kill his mother. The beginning and ending scenes are full of violence that wouldn’t be out of place in any other Schwarzenegger movie. It just makes no sense, these scenes make the movie inappropriate for children, but the cutesy theme would certainly alienate Arnold’s core audience. Who was this movie meant for? Sarcastic teenage boys who enjoy laughing at absolute crap? That seems to be the target audience to me.
I have to watch this movie every time it’s on cable. It gets funnier every time.
THIS IS MY PET FERRET!!