1311. Kindergarten Cop (1990)

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed

Director: Ivan Reitman

Running Time: 111 mins

Kindergarten Cop is an American film about a police officer who, in order to bring down a drug dealer, has to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher.

This isn’t an awful, but it isn’t a very good one either. Kindergarten Cop has got a fun premise that delivers some great laughs on occasions, but for the most part, it’s a dull Hollywood movie that takes itself just a little too seriously for what it should have been.

But firstly, the parts where Arnold Schwarzenegger and the class of 6 year olds are at odds – the entire reason you would watch this movie – are absolute gold. The madness of every single one of those scenes is hilarious, and I absolutely loved Schwarzenegger’s desperately confused face throughout.

There are some good laughs at other points too, but nothing that compares to those scenes, which means that this is a film that, whilst heavily flawed, can be entertaining if you really turn your brain off and forget the other 70% of the movie.

And that’s my major issue with this film: it’s more cop than kindergarten. I loved the scenes with the kids and Schwarzenegger, but unfortunately, they’re not the main focus of the film. It starts off in a generic Schwarzenegger-y way with him pursuing a criminal, and although that worked in a sort of self-referential, parodic way, this film just doesn’t keep that up enough to be as funny as it could have been.

Instead, we get lengthy periods where Schwarzenegger isn’t messing around with the kindergarteners, and instead acting like this is one of his normal action movies. For one, the crime story here isn’t particularly interesting, and there’s not much action either, so every time that this film moves back to this story, it gets really boring to watch.

Sure, if you’re a fan of all of the Schwarzenegger movies, you might like this, but for me, it felt like a real missed opportunity for a properly funny and silly comedy by focussing too much on the crime, and although there are some great laughs at its high points, this isn’t such a fun watch, and that’s why it gets a 6.2 from me.