Kindergarten Cop

The trouble with comedy-thrillers is that while they are sometimes funny, they rarely thrill. If Reitman's film gets closer than most to covering the bases, there remain huge gaps in plausibility and a romantic subplot any ten-year-old could tell you is just plain icky. That the film works at all is down to Big Arnie. Far more successfully than in Twins, Reitman cannily exploits and debunks the Schwarzenegger screen persona. The exposition is particularly to the point, establishing him as the meanest cop on the block, a hard man who persuades a reluctant witness to testify by threatening to hang out with her forever. Weighed down by a female partner (the delightfully cheeky Reed) and an unlikely undercover assignment as a kindergarten teacher, Macho Man looks set to become New Man. Faced with the kids from hell, Arnie has never been so helpless or so funny. All too soon, though, the cop is back in charge; the nagging feeling that his high discipline and relentless Phys Ed is creating a class of Überkinder rather blunts the bite of the humour.