1990 action comedyRating: 6/20
Plot: A cop has to pose as a kindergarten teacher in order to find a drug dealer. It's just like a Fast and the Furious movie except with children replacing the cars.
It's my final Urine Couch AM Movie Club selection, and it makes me a little sad. I don't know what Gene Siskel's ghost is going to do without me actually. Probably try to find a transvestite, drug dealer, trucker, or whore or some combination of those to sit in the lobby and watch movies with.
First off, Arnold's performance in this is one of the worst "big name" performances ever. It's got to be. He stumbles his way through this one, fitting into a comedy like seven ham hocks trying to fit into a latex glove. It's awkward and messy! And I'm not sure who was in charge of his wardrobe, but I'd guess that person never worked in Hollywood again. Or I could be wrong and the various outfits he wore in this were part of the comedy. He starts the thing in this glasses/stubble/trenchcoat ensemble that, along with his size, made him stand out way too much for an undercover cop. Later, he's wearing these jeans that are the oddest color of pant that I believe I've ever seen. He's dressed up at one point as a farmer, singing through "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" with ukulele accompaniment, and yes, that's as wonderful as it sounds. But that's not the most ridiculous outfit they even put him in! No, that would have to be the V-neck with gray sweatpants that made it completely obvious that Arnold Swarzenegger has never actually been a real person. As ridiculous as his wardrobe makes him look, his acting is what makes him aggressively ridiculous. And I'll say it again--this has to be right up there with the worst acting performances of all time. He spends the majority of the movie doing this actually:
That's a face that 99.9% of people just can't make. And I guess that's something. You know how all those 80's action movies gave Arnold those great one-liners? This has all kinds of them! My favorites:
"I'm the party pooper." Come on. That's classic.
"I'm the new kindergarten teacher." You have to read that with the same intonation he used with "I'll be back."
"It's not a tumor. It's not a tumor at all!"
"Good. Now we are having fun." (Picture him with a ferret for this one.)
"What's that? It's a fire alarm! Aaahh!"
"Hi, kids! I'm back." (One of the more touching moments in the movie. What am I saying? One of the most touching moments in movie history!)
"Good. Now we are having fun." (Picture him with a ferret for this one.)
"What's that? It's a fire alarm! Aaahh!"
"Hi, kids! I'm back." (One of the more touching moments in the movie. What am I saying? One of the most touching moments in movie history!)
You also get to see Arnold threaten children comically, participate in a two-legged race, and act all tough in some scenes where this transforms from a comedy to what seems to be the worst television cop drama of all time. He throws down hard, too, like he's making up for all the time lost shooting those scenes with the kids. He is, after all, the party pooper. Speaking of those kids, they act circles around him. The kids are a lot funnier in this than Arnold, especially when given a chance to improvise. The scripted stuff is lousy though. One kid gets a recurring line that somebody should have been shot for writing--"Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina." The second time the kid says it, he finishes it with a flourish of unnatural arm pumps that Arnold probably taught him between scenes. That kid's name is Miko Hughes, and shane-movies aficionados will be interested to know that he was Billy Robberson in Cops and Robbersons, a movie I've never actually seen. Don't be surprised if you see Miko Hughes' name turn up on my end-of-the-year post. I'm also fond of this bit of dialogue:
"He's a poo-poo head."
"He's a poo-poo face."
"Yeah, he's a cocka poo-poo."
The bad guy's got a ponytail. Did I not mention that? This movie also has one of the most exciting action sequences I've ever seen. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a ferret bite, a gunshot, an Arnold slow-motion dive for a gun, another gunshot, and more exaggerated motions than you'd see if you were watching a pair of mimes.
This has precious little to do with Kindergarten Cop, but I thought I'd reply here so you don't have to check back on my old posts.
ReplyDeleteLike your thoughts on Bad As Me. Lyrically, I find some of the more personal-seeming material connects, at least. It's hard to make out what he's saying half the time, anyway. I can see how an aestheticized musical take on violence in the Middle East might be off-putting, but I listen to "Hell Broke Luce" in the context of other political songs he's written. He's been trying to write that great anti-war song for awhile now. The track "The Day After Tomorrow" at the end of Real Gone is way too folksy for my taste and clashes with the vibe of the album; "The Road to Peace" on Orphans is better but it's so specific it was bound to seem dated in a few years. So I thought "Hell Broke Luce" was a third time's the charm kind of thing. It really does represent something he hasn't done before, and I thought the nursery rhyme element in lines like "Get me another body bag, the body bag's full" were creepy.
As for the statue of me, there is indeed one behind the Peterborough Wal-Mart. It is made of chewed bread, and captures that very pose. It used to be wearing the same jacket too, but a hobo stole it. And ate the arms. But you still get a sense of what it used to be, I think.
Hey, if you're curious about the radio show, go to this top-secret link: www.trentradio.ca/logger and see if you can download it. The logger rewrites itself every ten days. The time code for the last episode is 111031_210000_.mp3 and I think it's still there. I don't advertise it on the blog since it's supposed to be just for the programmers, but you could sneak in under cover of night...
ReplyDeleteThis is still only tenuously related to Kindergarten Cop, but have you seen Blood Tea and Red String? If you like stop motion it's the bee's knees. It kind of looks like Jan Svankmajer animating an Alejandro Jodorowsky script, with a crafty feminine twist. I liked it a lot.
It's probably the last good movie I'll ever see, because the best video store in town, perhaps the world, is closing this month. I'm going to raid their closing sale, but once I've watched my way through that haul I'll be reduced to watching Wheel of Fortune on my one fuzzy tv channel.
Or finding alternatives via the Internet. Where do you find all this good stuff when you're not on the Urine Couch?