The scenes involving Schwarzenegger and the kindergarten kids are the best things in the movie, not only because the kids say the darndest things, but also because Schwarzenegger's strong point here is gentle comedy, often with himself as the foil.Ĭontrasting with the classroom stuff is a low-key little romance involving Schwarzenegger and one of the other teachers ( Penelope Ann Miller), and a parallel story involving the vicious drug dealer and his mom, and a journey to the small town for the obligatory, but quite effective, violent climax. "Kindergarten Cop" was directed by Ivan Reitman, whose best work, like " Ghostbusters," shows an ability to mix the absurd with the dramatic, so we're laughing as the suspense reaches its peak. Then Reed gets food poisoning, and it's up to Schwarzenegger to face the screaming hordes of 5-year-olds. Reed used to be a schoolteacher, and so they convince the local school authorities to let her teach the kindergarten class - hoping to pick up clues even though the little boy and his mother have changed their names. The trail leads to a storybook town in the Pacific Northwest, where Schwarzenegger and Reed believe the little boy is attending kindergarten. So is Schwarzenegger, because he dreams of nailing this creep, and also because he believes that the ex-wife may have $3 million of Tyson's drug earnings. Tyson and his mother ( Carroll Baker) are eager to discover the whereabouts of his ex-wife and their son. When Lundgren does it, he's stiff, awkward, and probably in need of a few handfuls of Aspirin.The movie opens with Schwarzenegger and his cop partner ( Pamela Reed) on the trail of a vicious swine of a drug dealer and mama's boy, played with smarmy conviction by Richard Tyson. When Schwarzenegger lifts a child in nostril-flaring frustration, it's pretty damn funny. My point is in addition to lacking Schwarzenegger's personality and charisma, he's lacking the physical presence that automatically finds humor in the contrast between him and the tiny children. His knees appear to be in rough shape to the point that it looks like he's in pain when he runs. Not that you'd know it by the multiple women and a gay man throwing themselves his direction, but watch the guy try to move fast (here or in any of his recent DTV action movies). Sure he's tall, but despite the film's insistence that he's also muscular – his 30-year-old love interest mentions it more than once – he's looking a little worse for wear. Look, I like Lundgren as much as the next movie fan, but let's not pretend he even comes close to matching Schwarzenegger's over-sized persona and presence. The kids grow on Kimble, though, as he learns to love and communicate without scaring the crap out of them, but soon after he finds the woman he's searching for, her murderous ex arrives in town intent on abducting his son and killing anyone in his way. Kimble is clueless about kids – his female partner was originally going to do it, but she fell ill – and his efforts to question them like suspects isn't gaining any traction with them or the school's principal, who's allowed his presence with a very short leash. (Although you could make an argument for 1987's The Running Man being a comedy too.) Reitman was the genius responsible for seeing the potential in the big Austrian playing against type, and he followed it a couple years later with Kindergarten Cop, which casts him as a tough cop who goes undercover in an elementary school in the hopes of identifying a killer's estranged ex-wife and son before the bad guy finds them first. Schwarzenegger's comedy career may have started with 1979's The Villain, but he became a comedic lead for the first time in 1988's Twins.
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