YMMV / Kindergarten Cop

• Catharsis Factor: For anyone who grew up with abusive parents, the sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger honing in on Zack's bastard father is peak awesome. The only reason he didn't snap that guy like a twig was because he wasn't worth getting fired or arrested over. If there's An Aesop to be found in this movie, it's that violent parents are only safe by the mercy of teachers.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • First, Kimble almost goes into the kindergarten classroom on his first day still wearing his gun holsters. Then, after Kimble says, "They're six-year-olds. How bad could they be?", O'Hara suggests off-the-cuff that maybe he should take the guns. Considering the rise in American school shootings and suggestions that teachers ought to carry guns in the years since the film came out, it's a bit harder find either incident funny.
  • Richard Tyson playing a criminal Big Bad who is unable to reunite with his family because of his troubled background and trying to reach out to them despite it being against their wishes of being left alone is more cringing considering in real life, Tyson was busted for harassment and boozing in Mobile, Alabama.
• He Really Can Act: Many critics thought this way about Arnold Schwarzenegger in this film.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Anytime we see John bonding with the kindergarteners and Dominic, when he's not in usual badass Hollywood Action Hero mode and kicking bad guy butt (or in badass action guy mode and kicking any guy's butt if you also count The Terminator, where Arnold Schwarzenegger played the Big Bad). However, Arnold's time using his action guy mode in a heartwarming moment is when he confronts one of the kindergarteners' parents who is an Abusive Dad, beats him up and press charges against him. Principal Schlowski gets one by praising John for hitting the asshole.
  • Principal Schlowski introduces Kimble to the parents at the fair and praises the job he's done, inviting him to remain at the school as long as he wants.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Cullen Crisp is a crime lord, who is willing to kidnap his own son and hold him hostage at gunpoint during the climax of the movie and yet he is not as loathsome as Mr. Sullivan, Zack's father. When John Kimble sees that Zack was being beaten again, he angrily confronts Mr. Sullivan, punches him in the gut when he tries to take a swing at Kimble and was willing to completely beat him, until he sees a bunch of parents with their own kids watching him, so he stops himself and tells him that he's going to press charges against him instead. Many thought that John punching out Zack's abusive father was the most cathartic moment of the film. Even the school principal, who was reasonably skeptical of having Kimble as an undercover teacher with zero teaching experience was glad that he "hit that son of a bitch."
• Memetic Mutation: Pretty much all the early interactions between a completely lost Kimble and the kindergarteners are meme fountains. Several lines from the film—notably "Stop whining!" and "Who is your daddy and what does he do?" among others—found themselves on an Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard used by various radio morning shows for (likely fake) prank calls in the late nineties and early aughts, contributing to their memetic status. "It's not a tumor!" is another one that gets quoted a lot^note And it had to be quoted with Arnold's accent rather than just speaking normally (as in 'Too-mah'), as Family Guy has shown how the accent makes the difference. And sometimes, "There is no bathroom!"
  • Special mention goes to "Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina." Which gradually became famous due to how controversial such a line would be considered today.
  • Then of course, there’s Kimble screaming shut up. Whether it be in video or gif form, expect it to pop up when somebody gets annoyed.
• Misaimed Fandom: The "Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina" line likely wasn't intended to be anything more than an innocent Brick Joke from a child too young to know any better, but it frequently gets parroted by transphobes as a source of hate and by people on the other side who take it too seriously.
• Narm Charm: Kimble's Big "SHUT UP!" during his first day at school.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The big fire and shootout climax is pretty damn intense.
  • Kimble's nightmare. He dreams that during the kids' nap-time and while he's grading papers beside the window on a rainy day, Cullen Crisp slides into view from just outside to ominous music and slowly pulls a gun on Kimble who can only scream in silence before Cullen fires and he wakes up.
  • The very sudden jump from the fun, cathartic, humorous "What did it feel like to hit that son of a bitch?" scene to the murdered witness lying cold and dead on a slab.
  • You meet the love of your life...only for that person to be an obsessive criminal with an equally deranged mother. Joyce spent her life on the run from a bunch of criminal nutcases who wanted to rip her son away from her. When she learns Cullen is about to catch up to her, she understandably freaks out.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Angela Bassett played the flight attendant that served O'Hara and Kimble breakfast just before the "pencil-snapping" scene.
  • A 5-year-old Odette Yustman plays one of the kids in Kimble's class, namely the one speaking Spanish.
  • As does a young Ben Diskin!
  • Jason Reitman plays the student caught making out with a girl. One of his sisters is a background extra in the same scene.
  • Miko Hughes (the autistic genius from Mercury Rising) plays another.
• Sequelitis: Kindergarten Cop 2 received poor reviews and is largely detested by fans of the original. Most critics noted that Dolph Lundgren lacked the charisma of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The twins who Speak in Unison are among the better-remembered kids in the class, but they are only background characters after their first scene.
• Uncertain Audience: One of the main issues sometimes cited with the movie is that the concept and story as a whole is just a little too silly to be considered an "adult" film but a lot of the actual content is way too mature for it to be a family film that kids should be seeing.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Kimble assuring the single moms that their little boys are just playing with Barbies so they can learn to look up girls' skirts, which means that the Kindergarten girls in Kimble's classroom could have #MeToo horror stories in the future.
  • One child whose father ran away is particularly distraught about the fact that his father ran off with another man, implying that homosexuality is wrong and traumatic to children. However, considering it was the child's mother who states this, and she states concerns about her son playing with dolls, this may say more about the mother's feelings than the child's.
• Values Resonance:
  • Several parents and even Principal Schlowski are utterly weirded out by the concept of a man teaching kindergarten, with the former loudly assuming he must be gay. By the end of the film, Kimble has managed to prove himself as a competent teacher and gain their acceptance. Sadly, the town's initial attitude is still pretty common: as of 2019, over 97% of kindergarten and preschool teachers in the U.S. are female, with a major contributing factor being gender stereotypes of women being more suitable for taking care of children while men who wish to do so are likely either gay or possible pedophiles.
  • Crisp's mom being an uncomfortably obsessive and manipulative parent is all but stated to be one of the reasons why Crisp turned out the way he did. With "helicopter parenting" coming under increasing scrutiny, it makes Mrs. Crisp look even more grotesque in her actions.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Tough guy Arnold Schwarzenegger finds himself out of his depth when he has to deal with a class of adorable children: a heartwarming family comedy, right? Well, not really. Between the crackhouse shootout that introduces Kimble in all his badass glory, to an abusive father getting punched by the hero, to the blue-lipped junkie cold on the slab after being spiked by the villain, to Kimble dreaming of Crisp shooting him, to O'Hara being caught having noisy sex with her fiancé, to Crisp holding his own five-year-old son hostage, to Crisp getting shot three times in the chest, to Kimble bleeding out in the corner of a bathroom as Eleanor Crisp demands her grandson, the film is definitely not for children. When they reviewed the film on their show, Siskel & Ebert urged parents to take the PG-13 rating seriously.
• The Woobie: Zack gets physically abused by his father and his mother is complicit by inaction.

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