Kindergarten Cop

Bill Murray and Patrick Swayze were approached to play the role of Kimble.[5][6] Danny DeVito was also considered for the role, but Ivan Reitman nixed the idea due to the actor's height.[7]

Director Ivan Reitman and casting director Michael Chinich auditioned more than 2,000 children for the roles of the students.[8] Elijah Wood unsuccessfully auditioned for a role.[9]

Exterior scenes at Astoria Elementary School were filmed at John Jacob Astor Elementary School, located at 3550 Franklin Avenue in Astoria, Oregon.[6]

Universal Studios hired local artists Judith Niland and Carl Lyle Jenkins to paint murals on the walls at Astoria, and provided new playground equipment, a fenced playground, and a new lawn and hedges around the school. Most of the filming was completed after school was out in June 1990,[10] allowing many of the students and faculty to be extras in the film.[11] Students' artwork was also used.[12] While on location, Schwarzenegger insisted a private studio for daily workouts and weightlifting be assembled for his use.[6]

Other locations used in or near Astoria include the Bayview Motel,[12] Commercial Street in downtown Astoria,[13] and exteriors outside the Seafare Restaurant on Industry Street.[13] The school picnic was filmed at Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach, Oregon, twenty five miles south of Astoria.[13] Scenes at Joyce and Dominic's house were filmed at a private residence located at 414 Exchange Street[13] and highway scenes were filmed on U.S. 26 east of Seaside, Oregon, twenty miles from Astoria.[14]

Interior school scenes were shot at Universal Studios in Hollywood.[6][8][15] The film's opening scene was filmed at the Westfield MainPlace in Santa Ana, California,[13] and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California.[16]

Kindergarten Cop grossed $91.4 million in North America, $110.5 in other territories, and $202 million worldwide.[3][4] It was released in the United Kingdom on February 1, 1991, and topped the country's box office that weekend.[17]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 53% based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 5.50/10. The site's consensus reads, "Arnold Schwarzenegger substitutes his action brio with some refreshingly adept comedic timing, but Kindergarten Cop is too grim for children and too cloying for adults."[18] On Metacritic, it has a score of 61 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[20] Reviewer Caryn James of The New York Times said, "Like Twins, which was also directed by Ivan Reitman, nothing in the film is as funny as the idea of it."[21]

In Kim Newman's review for Empire, he wrote, "with a heart of purest mush, the film still manages to be generally entertaining" and gave it 3 stars out of 5.[22] An Entertainment Weekly review at the time of release notes that: "the movie never quite gels and it is not going to generate quite the mega hit business their producers are counting on", giving it a "C" grade.[23]

Roger Ebert said the film: "is made up of two parts that shouldn't fit, but somehow they do, making a slick entertainment out of the improbable, the impossible and Arnold Schwarzenegger" and awarded it three stars.[24]

On April Fool's Day 2012, as a prank, the film was announced to be selected for a release on DVD and Blu-ray Disc as part of the Criterion Collection, a video distribution company dedicated to the release of "important classic and contemporary films". It was said to be selected as important in part because of its genre revisionist use of both the policier and family comedy genres in the same film.[25] It was officially released on Blu-ray, though not by Criterion, on July 1, 2014.[26]

For the video game Silent Hill, parts of Astoria Elementary School from the film were used as reference for the location Midwich Elementary School.[27] Several of Schwarzenegger's memorable lines from the film were used in sound boards for prank phone calls that became popular in the early 2000s.[28] During an April 2021 interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Schwarzenegger stated that the idea behind the making of Superhero Kindergarten came from his desire "to do a sequel to Kindergarten Cop".[29]