"Kindergarten Cop" was one of the comedies that marked the Nineties and also the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is an indisputable fact, I think... so I viewed this sequel with a lot of suspicion. Still, I decided to give it a chance and see how good it could be. I don't intend to see it again. It is simply worthy of our oblivion.
I don't think it's really worth talking about the script here, because the film is essentially a reconstruction of the original, with almost the same story, but without the charisma and skill of Schwarzenegger, without the good work of director Reitman and without originality. If this weren't enough to make the film rather weak and unworthy of our attention, the film's insistence on pursuing very politically correct standards makes it as annoying and irritating as a priest when he decides to give an endless Sunday preaching: a school in which a religious feast suppressed in view of agnostics and where children eat tofu instead of peanut butter or chocolate? What world is this? And what was that conversation of "boys, girls and intersex"? The feeling I get is that the film tries to be more papist than the Pope, conveying messages of political correctness that no one really believes and that sound exaggerated when put into practice. In real life, there is no school like that... that I know of. And if it did, a child of mine would certainly not attend there.
Dolph Lundgren seems to have tried to tread the same path as Schwarzenegger, that is, to go from being an action movie tough guy to an actor we can appreciate in different roles. However, he is an actor lacking in charisma, is not very funny or sympathetic and does not give us more than a lukewarm performance that mimics the work of Schwarzenegger in the 1990 film. Bill Bellamy does not bring us anything particularly interesting either, and despite being slender and attractive, Darla Taylor doesn't do much more than be a credible love interest for Lundgren's character. Aleks Paunovic gives us a clichéd villain who seems to have come out of a TV series about the Russian mafia, and Sarah Strange was extremely underused.
On a technical level, the film isn't brilliant, either. If cinematography is quite competent and gives us a certain shine and elegance, the film seems to have been entirely designed for the television market and not for the big screen. The effects are sparse and look cheap, the sets are reasonable but don't go much further than the minimum requirement, and the editing and mixing is very poor, with cuts quite evident in some points. The soundtrack doesn't add value to it either.
I don't think it's really worth talking about the script here, because the film is essentially a reconstruction of the original, with almost the same story, but without the charisma and skill of Schwarzenegger, without the good work of director Reitman and without originality. If this weren't enough to make the film rather weak and unworthy of our attention, the film's insistence on pursuing very politically correct standards makes it as annoying and irritating as a priest when he decides to give an endless Sunday preaching: a school in which a religious feast suppressed in view of agnostics and where children eat tofu instead of peanut butter or chocolate? What world is this? And what was that conversation of "boys, girls and intersex"? The feeling I get is that the film tries to be more papist than the Pope, conveying messages of political correctness that no one really believes and that sound exaggerated when put into practice. In real life, there is no school like that... that I know of. And if it did, a child of mine would certainly not attend there.
Dolph Lundgren seems to have tried to tread the same path as Schwarzenegger, that is, to go from being an action movie tough guy to an actor we can appreciate in different roles. However, he is an actor lacking in charisma, is not very funny or sympathetic and does not give us more than a lukewarm performance that mimics the work of Schwarzenegger in the 1990 film. Bill Bellamy does not bring us anything particularly interesting either, and despite being slender and attractive, Darla Taylor doesn't do much more than be a credible love interest for Lundgren's character. Aleks Paunovic gives us a clichéd villain who seems to have come out of a TV series about the Russian mafia, and Sarah Strange was extremely underused.
On a technical level, the film isn't brilliant, either. If cinematography is quite competent and gives us a certain shine and elegance, the film seems to have been entirely designed for the television market and not for the big screen. The effects are sparse and look cheap, the sets are reasonable but don't go much further than the minimum requirement, and the editing and mixing is very poor, with cuts quite evident in some points. The soundtrack doesn't add value to it either.