MOVIE REVIEW : Kitschy, Kitschy Goo

With a crash, some flash and a chorus of “goos” and “aaaahs,” “Kindergarten Cop” (citywide), unveils the new kinder, gentler Arnold Schwarzenegger: would-be super-hunk for the ‘90s.

But, even from this movie’s new tot’s-eye perspective, it’s the same old Arnie game. The Austrian inflections and minimalist acting strategies haven’t changed. Neither have the affable, bemused stares, the softly maniacal relish at destroying bad guys.

There is something different: the context. Befitting the morning-after ‘90s, Schwarzenegger is now a robo-cop with a heart, a tweetie-pie terminator, Dirty Hansel with a pocketful of Gummi bears. He’s Sudden Death elfinized: with dozens of adorable kiddies dangling from every visible pectoral, gun-grip and bicep.

As image makeover and sheer crass commercial calculation, “Kindergarten Cop” is a dubious triumph. You have to give it credit: In a way, it’s the ultimate marketing-hook movie, a kind of pop-commercial bulldozer.

The director, Ivan Reitman, and the writers have streamlined their work with such single-minded professionalism that their storytelling becomes the cinematic equivalent of a foot in the door, a show that’s all sell, hype transmogrified. Watching the trailer probably made audiences want to see the movie, and watching the movie may make them want to see the trailer. Actually, I’m not sure which is the purer or more effective version of the story: maybe it achieves its perfect aesthetic form in the 15-second TV spots.

“Cop” begins with what plays like a 20-minute parody of most of the Schwarzenegger super-action specials of the ‘80s--with the star’s defiantly slovenly and cheerfully sadistic undercover cop, John Kimble, stalking a drug kingpin through a shopping mall, and pursuing a junkie witness to a Skid Row dive, which he proceeds to blast apart with what looks like a sawed-off howitzer.

Kimble, in his 12 o’clock shadow and great floppy overcoat, sometimes looks like a flasher. His nemesis Crisp, by contrast, is a cold-blooded, nasty-natty mama’s boy with a ponytail (Richard Tyson), enraged because his ex-wife and boy have disappeared. In order to trap him, Kimble and his female partner, Phoebe (played by that husky-voiced, scene-stealing wonder, Pamela Reed) have to stake out mother and child in Seattle. There, Phoebe will pretend to be the boy’s kindergarten teacher: a job that a series of contrived gastronomic and medical mishaps promptly switches over to Kimble.

The movie’s main under-theme is that the killer has what Kimble deserves: the wife and child that are life’s ultimate reward. Kimble, stoic dirty-job man, has been fleeing domesticity; crazy Crisp wallows in it with his equally sadistic mom (Carroll Baker). The movie becomes a race to see who ultimately finds and wins the prize.

But, even more than this wisp of a fish-out-of-water hook, the film’s strategy lies in its gentling of Schwarzenegger. It’s as if that first shot of slob Kimble were a before-and-after set-up. “Cop” wants to turn him into someone who belongs in a shopping mall. And it does: surrounding him with maternal or sisterly substitutes throughout: most obviously food-freak Phoebe and Linda Hunt as the school’s taskmaster principal.

The filmmakers play Kimble’s initial fascist tactics for laughs and then they suggest (consciously?) that he’s a better teacher, because he is a bit of a fascist: because he takes this anarchic classroom and whips them into drill-team shape, because he can beat up abusive parents.

Reitman uses the child actors well, but they’re not as important as the title and the trailers suggest, and some of their lines--like the deadpan gags about sexual organs--are cheap and exploitative. In the end, nothing gets in the way of this movie’s self-salesmanship: mapped out and executed with political campaign slickness. “Kindie-Cop” doesn’t have plot twists; it has testimonials and endorsements--or, rather, it has plot twists that turn into testimonials, that exist mainly to show what a swell guy Kimble-Schwarzenegger is becoming.

It would be lying not to say that some of the moviemakers here, Reitman and his editors especially, aren’t working at the top of their craft, or that the movie won’t reach audiences. On its own terms, “Kindergarten Cop” (rated PG-13, despite violence, sex and language) is nearly fool-proof: the last word in glib, shallow, soulless, spuriously warm-hearted commercialism. In one scene, it surpasses itself: Kimble’s class, in matching Abraham Lincoln beards and outfits, recites the Gettysburg address, Kimble gets a standing ovation, and Reitman and company scrape the dizzy heights. They’ve taken us very near the apotheosis of shameless kitsch.

‘Kindergarten Cop’

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Kimble

Penelope Ann Miller: Joyce

Pamela Reed: Phoebe

Linda Hunt: Miss Schlowski

Richard Tyson: Crisp

Carroll Baker: Eleanor Crisp

A Universal Studios release of an Imagine Entertainment presentation. Director Ivan Reitman. Producer Reitman, Brian Grazer. Executive producer Joe Medjuck, Michael C. Gross. Screenplay by Murray Salem, Herschel Weingrod, Timothy Harris. Cinematographer Michael Chapman. Editor Sheldon Kahn, Wendy Greene Bricmont. Costumes Gloria Gresham. Music Randy Edelman. Production design Bruno Rubeo. Art director Richard Mays. Set designer Set decorator Anne D. McCulley. Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (Violence, sex, language.).