Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
A tough police sergeant's mother comes to visit him, and promptly starts trying to fix up his life, much to his embarrassment. For his birthday she buys him a machine gun out of the back of a van, and begins to further interfere with his job and love life, eventually helping him with a case he's on.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is a broadly panned buddy-cop comedy that squanders its premise. The plot is formulaic and thin, built entirely around the fish-out-of-water gag of an overbearing mother meddling in police work with little escalation or wit. Stallone and Estelle Getty's performances are serviceable but never transcend the weak material — Getty leans hard on the dotty-old-lady archetype while Stallone looks visibly uncomfortable throughout. Cinematography is workmanlike studio fare with no distinctive visual choices. Novelty is minimal — the 'nagging mother embarrasses tough cop' concept had been done and the film adds nothing memorable to it. The ending resolves predictably with no surprise or earned catharsis. A thoroughly mediocre film across all dimensions.