Cinema Sunday: Kindergarten Cop

The movie for today's Cinema Sunday is one that I've quoted a lot over the years but actually never watched into a few months ago.

The quote in question revolves around someone having a splitting headache and someone else offering the possible diagnosis of a brain tumor. 

The response: "It's NOT a TOO-MAH!" 

If I complain of having a headache, my wife Andrea will immediately start diagnosing what it could be, up to and including brain cancer. 

And I have to reply, "It's NOT a TOO-MAH!" 

You may wonder how I used this line for years from a movie I did not actually watch until recently.  

I just... know things, OK?  

Today's Cinema Sunday turns the spotlight on Kindergarten Cop. 

I happened to catch this movie on TV a few months back. It was a later Sunday afternoon and I was too tired to lift the remote to look for something else.   

Released in 1990, this movie is very much a product of the 1980's from fashions, hairstyles, lighting and a synthesizer heavy soundtrack.   

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as John Kimble, a tough police detective who lives and breathes being a tough police detective. There is little that defines him beyond being a tough police detective.  

Kimble arrests Cullen Crisp, an infamous drug dealer, after a witness saw Crisp murder an informant. Crisp is obsessed with finding is ex-wife Joyce who he says stole millions of dollars from him before disappearing with their son. 

The witness gets killed which leaves Kimble with one last option to bring down Crisp, to locate Joyce  before Crisp does and convince her to testify against him.  

Kimble and his partner Phoebe O'Hara got to Astoria, OR where they believe Joyce is hiding with her kindergarten aged son. The plan is for Phoebe to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher to suss out which of the kids in the class is Joyce 's. 

Unfortunately a bout of food poisoning puts Phoebe out of commission, leaving it to Kimble to become the kindergarten teacher.  

Big, hulking, Austrian accented John Kimble is going to teach 5 year old kids.  

A super hard ass tough guy copy played by Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. kindergarten children.  

Of course the outcome is not in doubt. 

It's the kindergarten kids for the win and John Kimble ready to quit! 

But....

Crisp is narrowing down where his ex-wife and kid are and time is running out for Kimble to figure who they are in Astoria, OR.

So the undercover operation must go on and Kimble actually employs tactics from his police academy training to help keep the kids in line which the kids actually enjoy and they start really starting to like their new teacher. 

And John is really starting to enjoy his role as a teacher but he can't forget he's a cop and why he's in Astoria.  

Turns out Joyce  is one of the teachers at the school who John Kimble's been crushing on and her son is a weird but sweet kid he's been bonding with. 

So now tough guy John Kimble has some personal stakes in trying to keep them safe.  

Joyce is exposed and doesn't trust John or Phoebe (who's feeling a bit better now) to keep her or her son safe. And then damn it, Crisp shows up at school which devolves into a violent show down that leaves John Kimble grievously injured but the day is saved and Crisp is saved thanks to his son's pet ferret.

Basically, Kindergarten Cop hangs on a one joke premise of "What would happen of you if plop  Arnold Schwarzenegger in the middle of a bunch of kids?" What's amazing is how well this movie works with the one joke premise. Schwarzenegger will never be mistaken for any kind of master thespian but the man knows what he can do and what his limits are. His John Kimble character leans hard into the "tough as nails cop who doesn't play by the rules" trope. But Schwarzenegger embraces the act of allowing the cracks into that facade, to get to know his past failures as a husband and father and his earnest attempts to right by Joyce and her son.  It might not be "great" acting but for Schwarzenegger, it feels real enough. 

Kindergarten Cop is a silly movie with enough violence and collateral damage one would expect from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of that era but with a surprising amount of warmth and gentle humor, a lot coming from the big guy himself.