KC
Kindergarten Cop – I thought of this as a wimpy movie, with Arnold mugging badly with the kids, but I forgot that there are two murders, one quite brutal, and the bad guy gets shot dead at the end (with his mother finding his dead body – brrrrrr!!! What mother, no matter how creepy and evil, deserves that…).
The story follows Detective John Kimble, a big city detective whose marriage has fallen apart because of his singular dedication to arresting scumbags. His sole quarry now is Cullen Crisp, a vain scumbag with his long hair in a ponytail who makes sure that he has a manicure before he kills someone, or steals candy from a baby, etc. Kimble goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher when he finds out that Cullen’s ex-wife (who could testify against him) has moved out to a small town, Astoria, in Oregon, “the divorcee capital of the world.” The highlights of the movie are probably Pamela Reed, who poses as Kimble’s sister and does a great German accent posing as Schwarzenegger’s sister (she also brings along a hilarious fiancee/chef, the bumbling Bob Nelson), and the magnificent Linda Hunt, who plays a school principal. Schwarzenegger’s interaction with the kids is not too bad as he often gets to play up to his background in athletics for some of the teaching scenes, although I still think he’s still too goofy to be playing a non-Terminator. But there are some good lines:
Is your wife okay?
Compared to What?
I hate feeling like this. [barfs]
I hate it too.
When the kids are introducing their parents: “My dad’s divorced, my mom’s divorced…” “My dad’s a gynecologist, he looks at vaginas all day long.” The twins inform Kimble “our mom says that our dad is a real sex machine.” When Kimble is smitten with his colleague, Reed says “relax butch, the love doctor’s here.” Not a bad little film, but a little underwhelming from the director of Ghostbusters and other blockbuster films (they’d surely have hoped Kindergarten Cop would be just as big, right?). Maybe he blew his budget securing Schwarzenegger.