It's Not Lundgren's Fault: Kindergarten Cop 2 Review

Released by Universal Pictures

Release Date: May 16th, 2016

Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Bill Bellamy, and Darla Taylor

Written by David H. Steinberg

Directed by Don Michael Paul

Rated PG-13 (some violence and suggestive material) 

We all have fond memories of the original Kindergarten Cop, the lovely children’s film that opens with Arnold Schwarzenegger murdering a bunching of people in the name of justice. That is not really the part that we remember. We look fondly back at Schwarzenegger yelling “SHUT UP!” and “It’s not a tumor.” We love the film because of how absurd it is. This does not carry over to the 26 years late sequel Kindergarten Cop 2, which debuted on DVD and Netflix earlier this week.

Since this is a straight-to-video film Arnold could not be called into service, so they called the next best actor, Dolph Lundgren.

Lundgren plays an FBI agent how needs to retrieve a flash drive, that holds the entire FBI database (how big is this thing?) from a school before the generic bad guys get their hands on it. Lundgren has to pose as a teacher and question the kindergarten kids about where the drive might be. He also hits on the pretty teacher in the next classroom, and fights some bad guys.

I know that this is sounding familiar. It sounds like I just gave you the plot for the first Kindergarten Cop film, but just updated it to modern times. You would think that, as would I. But this is the sequel, not the original. The script probably took a day or two to write. The writers just had to do some word replacement in Microsoft Word and they had a “new” script. The film plays beat for beat with the original.

There is nothing really all that good about the film. Lundgren does his best with his limited acting ability and has a funny line or two. Bill Bellamy, who is also in the film but who cares, plays Lundgren’s partner and has zero laughs. It is really weird because Bellamy is a comedian and doesn’t really try to be funny. Maybe he didn’t care or his comedic bits were cut out, who knows.

The kids mildly amusing, though. You can tell that some of the scenes were just Lundgren and the kids adlibbing. These scenes did get a few chuckles out of me.

The film was directed by Don Michael Paul, who gave us such classics as Half Past Dead, Who’s Your Caddy?, Lake Placid 4, Sniper 5 & 6, Jarhead 2, Tremors 5, and the upcoming Death Race 4. Paul is not a very talented director. He just points and shoots and, sometimes, shakes the camera to make it look more realistic. Luckily, we don’t have to worry about too much shaky cam here, but he brings nothing to this film. I could say that it is a low budget film and he didn’t have a lot to work with. That would be a lie, though. There are a lot of filmmakers who work with a lot less and get so much more. Paul should sit down and watch some YouTube to get some pointers.

There is very little action here and what we do get is shot so horribly that I have to wonder why they included it in the first place. There is very little shaky cam in these scene, but the action is shot in close-ups, so we have no clue what is going on. We will see a bunch of images, hear a sound, and someone is on the floor. I have seen hidden videos that are shot better than any of the random movements this film tries to pass off as "action".

There are also some weird things that happen in this film. There is an Asian kid who is subtitled even though we know what he is saying. Who thought this was funny? It is just a piss poor way of trying to get a laugh or two out of something that is pretty racist.

We also get the black captain who is always mad. This time however, he chews gum, probably to help him subdue his anger. The weird thing here is that he keeps putting the gum behind his ear before he talks to anyone. Does he find it rude to talk and chew gum? Can he not talk and chew gum? Why is there gum in the first place? Also, I think the actor, who is not listed on imdb at the time of this writing, seems to be channeling Forest Whitaker as the captain does some very strange things and Whitaker is known for adding little weird things to his characters.

There is also the fat guy who is a brony and into, what appears to be, Game of Thrones, the kid who says that someone he knows has a vagina, and the dad who, may or may not, beat his kid.

I know that a lot of people have a fondness for the first Kindergarten Cop. That film is a cult classic that has sprouted out a lot of memes and one-liners. No one watching Kindergarten Cop 2 is going to have that same feeling ten or twenty years down the line. This is an instantly forgettable film that shouldn’t have been made. The filmmakers clearly know very little about making a good film. They just wanted to pump out a film as quickly as possible and it shows. Skip this one and watch anything else with Dolph Lundgren in it.




Jimmy P is an avid film lover and tries to get out to the theater as much as possible. He is also a collector of DVDs and Blu-rays. Jimmy P lives with his wife in Parts Unknown.

You can reach Jimmy P with any questions or comments through email, Facebook, Twitter, our Reddit page, or by commenting on any post.