Review of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) by Logan A — 16 Jul 2012

The absolute best thing I can say about this movie is that it doesn't quite live-up to the awfulness of other legendarily bad comedies, such as Going Overboard, Bio-Dome or Jack and Jill.

That being said, Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot is an overall joyless film that fails to deliver anything but maybe a few scant chuckles here or there due to sheer luck, or due to the fact that you're dying to laugh at something.

A match made in Heaven (or more likely a Hollywood business board-room), the pairing of action-star Sylvester Stallone with one of the Golden Girls is almost ridiculous enough to warrant laughs itself, or rather the fact that some Hollywood mogul or moguls thought that this would be a good idea is what warrants laughs. I think one of the factors that lead to this preposterous film's creation was an attempt to replicate the financial success of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990 movie Kindergarten Cop. I think it's safe to say at this point that regardless of your opinion on Kindergarten Cop, that attempt did not succeed, as Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot is far, far worse.

The key word to remember with this movie is "predictable". Once you know the premise, you can guess 95% of the set-pieces, jokes and situations that will crawl weakly across the screen in an attempt to make you laugh. She tries to tuck her obviously-too-old son into bed at night, she meddles in his love-life, she tells his coworkers at the Police Station embarrassing stories about his childhood, she nags him to eat healthier and maintain better hygiene. These are punctuated by the odd scene every once in a while of Estelle Getty being at the right place and time to fire a gun or witness a crime in progress. The shenanigans are so bland and easy to see coming they're almost painful they're almost painful.

Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot is a best forgotten relic. It's a celebrity vehicle with a weak script and an even weaker pay-off. It is not recommended for anyone aside from film-scholars studying Hollywood embarrassments or cinematic masochists.