Secret Service Agent Sam "Sammy" Simms (Sinbad) is a lighthearted field agent who wants to work protection detail. Simms is given an opportunity to move up to protection when he is assigned to Luke Davenport (Brock Pierce) the 13-year-old mischievous son of President Paul Davenport (James Naughton) who has made a habit of irritating whatever agent is assigned to protect him. As Sinbad accompanies Luke through the course of his very rigidly structured life and school schedule enduring Luke's various pranks and insults Simms eventually learns that Luke is lonely as his position in the White House often leaves him by himself with his parents always busy and no real friends to speak of which Simms tries to help with.
First Kid is a 1996 Disney comedy created as a vehicle for comedian Sinbad who began working with the company in the early 90s on projects such as The Sinbad Show and 1995's Houseguest. Purchased for around $500,000 by the Walt Disney Company the movie falls well into the mold of established family comedies of the time with the kid centric premise inspired by the likes of Home Alone and its various imitators as well as Disney attempting to cater material with seemingly more "edge" to appeal to the 90s youth culture that favored independence and rebellion as cultural foundations. Made for a modest $15 million, the film was a modest success at the box office taking in $26 million during its late august release and proving successful enough that Disney briefly considered turning the concept of the film into a TV series (that ultimately never came to be). Critical reception was pretty much what you'd expect with many pointing out the similarities to the glut of family comedies that had tried to recapture the success of Home Alone to diminishing returns but there were some who praised the chemistry between Sinbad and Pierce. First Kid is certainly a better vehicle for Sinbad than his outing in Houseguest, but it's very safe material that feels like it would've been at home in that sitcom that never happened.
I actually rather liked Sinbad as Simms as despite being slightly unorthodox with his running gag of garishly colored ties (both neck and bow varieties) or his introduction of using his position to get free coffee and donuts by pretending the pastries and beverages are somehow a threat he is rather likable as an eccentric Secret Service agent whose energetic personality clash with the rigidity of his colleagues. Brock Pierce is also good as Luke as he does have charm during the comic scenes and is sympathetic during the dramatic scenes, but the character is written pretty inconsistently as we do sympathize with him in some circumstances, but then there's others instances where he'll do things like blackmail Simms to get his way using something Simms did to be nice as Leverage that really isn't addressed in a way where we can overlook it. Outside of the dynamic between Simms and Luke we get pretty standard stuff for this kind of movie including 90s bully archetypes, not one but two blandly written love interests who don't get to do much, and of course animal shenanigans aplenty.
We also get a healthy dosage of product placement with scenes of the characters eating with prominently displayed McDonald's bags or a lengthy slapstick sequence where Simms has to dress up in a Coca-Cola can costume on roller skates (don't ask). We also have prominent displays of an attraction Virtuality's VR game Dactyl Nightmare in a relic of the 90s brief fascination with the very young VR technology. The movie also has a surprisingly dark climax that's framed almost the same way you'd film something like In the Line of Fire and while part of me wants to applaud the movie for the sheer audacity in having something this dark in a what's advertised as light family fare, the other part of me thinks that maybe there should've been some massive re-writes put to work in refining the third act to something more tonally appropriate.
First Kid is a very middle of the road film from the 90s that features decent chemistry between Sinbad and Pierce, but also isn't funny, charming, or clever enough to make up for its indulgence of 90s formula and gush of product placement. The best way to view First Kid is as more of a time capsule than a movie and I suppose if you want to see pure undiluted peak 90s you'll get all you can handle and then some.
