Kindergarten Cop (1990), Ivan Reitman

Reitman did Ghostbusters and Shivers, but what’s Arnie ever done that’s any good?  Oh yeah, Predator. This isn’t a finest moment for either of them, as Arnie cashes in his man-mountain image to make this not that hilarious or heart-warming family flick. In fact, it’s a weirdly judged film – along with all the “I want to be a princess!” and “Four-score and ten” cuteness you get a murdered junkie girlfriend on a morticians slab.

Pamela Reed, who plays Arnie’s puking and eating sidekick Detective Phoebe O'Hara is good in this – but didn’t go on to do a whole lot more outside of the voice of Ruth Powers in the Simpsons.

Why was the central kid played by twins? And why was he seemingly OK about meeting his mum's new boyfriend shooting his long lost dad the moment he turns up? My son seemed to think it was reasonable. To me, this is the kind of movie that demands a sequel. By now, he’d be in his early twenties, properly psychotic (did no one else find that silver foil stuff a glaring omen of mental illness?). Maybe he's even worked out that there’s two of him.

The scariest person in the whole film is Eleanor Crisp’s evil, uptight mother – played by Carroll ‘Baby Doll Meighan’ Baker. it’s predictable to see the cause of the problem being traced back to the unloving mother, but even that old chestnut can't stop the chill of seeing a women buy an anal thermometer in preparation of welcoming her grandson back into the family.