by Nelson
I once attended a party and fell asleep while Kindergarten Cop was on. When I woke up a few hours later, the movie was still playing, and it was weirdly on the last scene I remembered from the night before. I went on to realize that the movie was playing on repeat and took a moment to reflect on the simple but beautiful little miracles technology can offer.
There are plenty of good things to say about Kindergarten Cop. It’s one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most quotable films; The Lunchroom Terminator sets his sights on a child abuser while the school principal cheers him on, and a ferret saves the day by helping Arnold kill the bad guy in the end.
But about those ill-fated bad guys?
Cullen Crisp is awful. Over the years, the Austrian Oak has kicked a lot of asses, but you can’t help but like the guys he’s tearing apart in the name of righteous justice. I always watch Commando with a faint and futile hope that Matrix and Bennett will decide to put their differences aside and go chop down trees together; I still like to imagine that Quaid really does see Richter at the party – armless and ready to make up, and I long for the T-800 to hand Reese a nice gift basket. But, in the case of Crisp, all I ever wanted was for Detective Kimble to resurrect and murder him again.
There’s just no excuse for Cullen Crisp. Not only is he the most underwhelming Arnold villain ever, but he’s got to be the most disappointing no-gooder in the vast filmography of the late great Ivan Reitman. Walter Peck was an excellent example of a good and totally hateable scoundrel – regardless of all those rumors people keep hearing about a certain missing appendage. Vigo the Carpathian, the big slug in Evolution, even the bratty kid chasing the Sugar Ray groupie in Father’s Day are all great examples of well-done big bads that posed a significant threat to the heroes while being engaging presences themselves.
This ponytailed loser poses about as much threat to John Kimble as Bret Hart’s skull does to Goldberg’s foot. The man gets manicures, and not in the cool, respectable “gee that guy is snazzy!” way either. Just look at him. Being well groomed doesn’t do anything about the dead squirrel this guy has strapped to the back of his head, and he sounds like a whiny eight-year-old whenever he’s confronted by The Party Pooper.
It only gets worse from there, though. The only successful act of evil Crisp manages to pull off happens before the movie’s opening credits are done. He shoots a drug addict. That’s it. And he even screws that up by killing the guy in front of a witness. After that, his mother takes care of the heavy work. So he’s a big tough ne’er-do-well drug dealer in ruthless pursuit of his ex-wife and son, but he also happens to run to his mommy whenever he can’t do things for himself. Even Tia Carrere showed more confidence and bravery when she went up against Arnie.
Cullen spends most of Kindergarten Cop locked away in a Los Angeles jail after getting busted while trying to have his nails done. His mother gets him released for the movie’s climax, and the pair head to Astoria to be mean to the ex-wife and take their son/grandson back home. Crisp’s son’s name, by the way, is Cullen Jr. It’s really little wonder that his wife left him considering his determination to pass his lameness onto his son. Sure, the boy could potentially rise above a name like Cullen Crisp Jr., but it certainly hits him with a significant setback before he even gets a chance to start crawling.
The bad haired baddie successfully snatches a Hot Wheels playset off of an unsuspecting Astorian despite having no indication that his son has any interest in toy cars whatsoever. Based on what we see of the kid, he’s way more into lasers and how great his new Kindergarten teacher is than Hot Wheels, so you might as well count the playset heist as yet another loss for an evildoer inept enough to make Elmer Fudd look like a master huntsman.
He tells stupid lies, too. He snatches his kid up after starting a fire in the school and immediately insists that he’s a fireman. But Cullen, you dumb bastard, you’re not even wearing a fireman’s uniform! A five-year-old of average intelligence is too smart to fall for such an asinine attempt at deception, but Cullen marvels over what a genius his son must be to have noticed that firemen don’t have ponytails – totally oblivious to the fact that not even an unborn child would have taken him seriously.
All that aside, the absolute worst thing about Mr. Cullen “He’s my son!” Crisp is that he doesn’t get a very satisfying comeuppance. By the time the movie gets to the final showdown, you’re ready to see Schwarzengger ram his fist through this guy’s stomach and break his spine, but that doesn’t happen. Crisp manages to put Detective Kimble down with a shot to the knee – a shot that he lands entirely by accident, mind you – before This Is My Ferrett breaks his “I never bite rule” and saves the day. Arnold rids the world of one of the more absurd examples of a wannabe artist ponytail forever with a well-placed bullet, but it’s just not enough. I needed to see Cullen Crisp split apart T1000 style and fall into a vat of molten steel. Instead, he fares better against Arnold than Crispin Glover does against Jason Voorhees.
My initial idea for this particular piece was to take a look at several of the not-so-stellar wrongdoers The Austrian Oak was forced to contend with over the decades. The problem was that Crisp was the first guy to come to mind, and, all of a sudden, Evil John Connor from Terminator Genisys looked like Thulsa Doom by comparison. It’s not the manicure. It’s not the absurdly transparents lies. It’s not even the ponytail or being a lousy, whiny mama’s boy. He stole toys and held his own son at gunpoint, and we didn’t get to see Arnold grab him by the ankles and dip him into a vat of hydrochloric acid before the movie ended.
Then again, though, what’s more appropriate for an underwhelming villain than an underwhelming death scene?
Doubtfire 