Undercover cop John Kimble (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is used to dealing with the worst people in the underworld. But now he has a new problem: six year olds.
On the hunt for a gangster's ex-wife and child, Kimble is forced to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find them.
Will Kimble find his charges before the gangster does? More importantly, will Kimble figure out how to teach his class before they drive him out of the school?
A key text in Schwarzenegger’s filmography, Kindergarten Cop signalled that the action star’s shift toward comedy had paid off, and how Ahnuld could re-tool his established persona for a younger audience.
The first 20 minutes of the movie - sans the child-like scrawl of the title sequence - feels designed to gently move the viewer from their traditional view of Schwarzenegger into the kid film that it wants to be.
Big action stars shifting into kid movies is de rigueur now (think Vin Diesel in The Pacifier, The Rock in The Game Plan or John Cena in whatever that firefighter movie was). In 1990, Kindergarten Cop was a fresh concept - so fresh that the movie still features at least two shoot-outs and multiple scenes of violent action. It is not as explicit as Schwarzenegger’s R-rated stuff, but it is still pretty strong for a movie about kindergarten - a character dies from an overdose in this film for children.
Even the portrayal of the kids is amped up to match the star - when Kimble first arrives at the school, we overhear a conversation between a teacher and a student who punched another student, a girl. This is serious by itself, but then we learn that the girl poisoned the boy’s pet hamsters - so there is a future serial killer at the school.
The intention seems to be to try and emphasize the obstacles Kimble faces as a teacher. It could also be the filmmakers’ way of building an equivalence between Kimble’s past work and current role, but it comes off way too adult and weird for a kid’s movie. Or it is just an example of how much the genre has changed in the… 30 years since it came out. Ugh, I’m getting old.
What I appreciated about Kindergarten Cop - and this might just be myself as an adult - is how earnest the movie is. There is a certain style to the acting in kids movies nowadays, a layer of unreality that seems designed to avoid displeasing its target audience.
Part of the reason the movie works is that the acting never leans into the joke. Schwarzenegger is pretty good in this movie - some of his reads have justifiably become memes, but he is totally believable as the tough guy trying to rediscover his humanity.
The romance with Penelope Ann Miller’s Joyce is fine, but the real magic is between Arnie and Pamela Reed as Kimble’s partner Phoebe. She is so fun and charismatic that I wish the pair got to make another buddy movie together.
Richard Tyson is suitably odious as Crisp, and Carroll Baker is also good as his domineering mother Eleanor. They are the most ‘adult’ element of the movie - Eleanor poisons a junkie who informs on her son - and the filmmakers do a good job of setting them up as formidable antagonists for the ex-Terminator.
I have read in the past that Ivan Reitman was instrumental in grounding the wilder tangents of Ghostbusters, and he brings a similar level of verisimilitude to Kindergarten Cop. While some of the violence is shocking, I think it is more a case of my expectations, based on the genre. As a viewing experience, the filmmakers do a good job of balancing the violence so that it does not undermine the lighter, sillier aspects of the movie.
Because of its tonal swings, Kindergarten Cop is a strange beast - but it works. And by the ending, it almost becomes touching - the script does a pretty good job of moving Kimble from hardened cop to softened kindergarten teacher, and it never feels jarring.
More than The Terminator or Predator or Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop may be the perfect example of Schwarzenegger’s savviness in picking his collaborators and projects. His choices would become shakier as the new decade wore on, but in 1990 Schwarzenegger had completed his turn from muscle man to proper movie star.
It is an arc that should be unbelievable - but it happened. That about sums up Kindergarten Cop.
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