Kindergarten Cop is something truly special - a perfect combination of gooey sentimentality and High Eighties polish. Arnold plays a hard-edged narc cop trying to bring the greasy drug lord Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson, with hair to match his character's name) to justice. Arnold discovers that Crisp's ex-wife and son reside in a small Oregon town, so he and a former teacher-turned-detective O'Hara go undercover to find the wife to get her to testify. Arnold is forced to take O'Hara's substitute teaching place when she comes down with the flu, and hilarity ensues when brawny manly man is overwhelmed by cute little childrens. On paper, this film sounds like an absurd, forced attempt to combine an 80s action flick with a fish-out-of-water comedy - but somehow the collision of square muscle-ness and circle kindergarten-ness is handled with enough charm (and about as much grace as an Arnold vehicle can be handled) to make it really work. So much so that Arnold's pride and protectiveness of his kindergarteners as he learns to tame the classroom becomes a far more interesting and touching story than the action elements that return in the third act. The film certainly has its weaknesses, a villain duo that's not all that interesting, a third act that's not quite as exciting as its first two, some humor that seems misplaced now (and may have seemed misplaced even back in 1990), but somehow the unlikely duo of Arnold and kids is a strong enough glue-stick to keep the film mostly in one piece. Kindergarten Cop always sucks me in whenever it's on television and then proceeds to take a straight shot at my heart.
8/10
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