Kindergarten Cop 2

And Keeping Law Enforcement Racist

I’m a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, though I can’t say “Kindergarten Cop” is one of his highlights. I’m not the most moral person (y’know, being an ex-con), so the movie’s foul language and violence doesn’t upset me, but it is a strange mix when paired with the kid-friendly slapstick. He starred in the movie between the unimpeachable duo of “Total Recall” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”, so it’s more of a comedic way station as opposed to a movie Schwarzenegger was proud of making. I’m gonna arbitrarily choose this as an explanation.

It makes sense that decades later, there would be a cheap cash-in sequel, one that definitely did not star Arnold. My first thought was to ignore it. After all, he didn’t return for a “Jingle All The Way” sequel and they opted to swap in Larry The Cable Guy, so a Schwarznegger-less Schwarzenegger sequel isn’t exactly an event. It does say something about the man’s legacy that, while I was down, there were two “Terminator” sequels, two “Predator” installments, and even a new Arnold-free “Eraser”. But “Kindergarten Cop 2” landed on my radar hard because Arnold’s replacement was none other than Arnold’s fellow Expendable, The Immortal Dolph Lundgren.

Fairweather movie fans know Lundgren as a grunt who has slugged his way through decades of action movies, many of them indistinguishable to a non-action fan. They’re neglecting the fact that Lundgren may be the world’s most interesting man. He went to MIT and has multiple degrees in chemical engineering. He seduced Grace Jones, and battled James Bond and Rocky. He speaks five languages and recently defeated kidney cancer. He’s a black belt in karate and he’s been credited as a writer, producer and a director on multiple films. He was He-Man and he was The Punisher. He’s a walking action movie waiting to happen.

“Kindergarten Cop 2”, like its predecessor, opens with a distinctly unfriendly-for-kids action sequence, with Lundgren participating in a criminal sting. It’s a particularly low-energy, cheap opening, to the point where I thought there would be a reveal that the motel room location was actually fake. Seeing the banter play out in this sequence between Lundgren and his partner (a terrified Bill Bellamy) gave me a chance to look up the director. Wouldn’t you know, it was Don Michael Paul, infamous Hollywood troubadour turned fly-by-night helmer of direct-to-DVD/streaming sequels. His studio debut as a filmmaker all those years ago was the infamous Steven Seagal picture “Half Past Dead”. Before this one, he had logged sequels to “Jarhead”, “Sniper” and “Tremors”. After directing “Kindergarten Cop 2”, another “Sniper” and “Tremors” followed, and then a “Death Race” sequel, a “Scorpion King”, another “Jarhead”, another “Tremors” and… woah, a sequel to the Adam Sandler/Damon Wayans buddy comedy “Bulletproof”? Someone’s going to have to tell me if any of these are any good but first I’m gonna go ahead and read their minds and find out that no, none of them are good, thanks for the thoughts.

That sting leads to a search for a misplaced thumb drive that has a bunch of MacGuffiny evidence they’ve got to find. Turns out, the drive is being hidden somewhere in a kindergarten, and it’s going to take the efforts of one specific chemical-engineer-turned-action-hero. The budget is being stretched here – I bet Bellamy cost quite a bit! -- so there are quite a few unfamiliar faces in this cast, possibly for good reason. Upon arriving at the school, Lundgren is sized up by tech guy Hal, a portly, goateed goofball who immediately tries to be competitive and dismissive of Lundgren in a way that’s meant to be charming or perhaps funny. At one point, he “claims” a gorgeous female coworker, saying, “Dibs!” and threatening him even after the woman has shown strong affection towards Dolph. Hal’s reward for being a creepy misogynist is to become a hero at the end, but not before receiving a taser to the crotch.

It’s the teaching portions of the movie that reveal “Kindergarten Cop 2” is a Trojan Horse for, sigh, a bunch of tired culture war talking points that have nothing to do with how everyday people live their lives. I’m just shocked they were able to squeeze these words into Lundgren’s mouth. He has several meltdowns upon finding out that the kids all only eat healthy food and have allergies, as if that wasn’t happening decades ago. Upon reading them a childrens’ book, he breaks down and scolds the kids for thinking that everyone “needs” to share, assuring them sometimes it’s okay to only have things for themselves. Through montage, he’s taught by Bellamy what is or is not an acceptable way to speak to children today, when to be supportive and when to stay silent. It’s a very dogmatic approach – despite the supposed identification in Lundgren’s aggravation over these modern ways (his lifestyle literally involves him doing ninety minutes of exercise and ending the day with a steak and a beer), the movie suggests that these very “woke” strategies actually work. Yes, I was in prison for a long time, but this stuff is absolutely Martian.

Dolph Lundgren can do almost anything, but comedy isn’t in that considerable skillset. His comic timing is a step too slow, and in a film like this, filled with amateurs, it’s often deadly. He has a few action moments to try out his martial art skill, but the choreography is sluggish and clunky, and makes it seem as if this then-59 year old man is less dangerous than he probably really is. The villain of the piece, and the owner of the hard drive, is a generic Russian gangster right off the rack, a character and actor that could be swiped out for thousands of others. We knew this movie would be an insult to Schwarzenegger, but it didn’t also need to be an insult to the person who actually replaced him.

It’s not a surprise that “Kindergarten Cop 2” doesn’t exactly take education seriously. What is a surprise is that it takes it more seriously than the current administration of America. All across the country, lessons regarding the struggles of minorities are being erased, deleted, cancelled, buried. The struggles of a system that favored, and favors, one class over another are being obscured by those who want to pretend that there has been equality always, and that white supremacy has been a myth.

My concern is how this ignores the very real reality of our criminal justice system, how it has roots in racist practices, and how it remains racist today due to disproportionate overpopulation of Blacks and Hispanics in jails and prisons. The Three-Strikes Law, as it is reflected and echoed through several other systems, is one such piece of evidence. As researched here (a good long read) It’s based in eugenics studies, the ideas that some races and ethnicities are more prone to violating law more than others. When we begin to more to a decarceral state, we will ask why we enacted these policies in the first place, what our train of thought was. It’s important to know, in every case that it wasn’t about public safety or about rehabilitation. It was about punishment of those white society felt were beneath them. The criminal justice system is so flawed because it contains multitudes of miscues, inaccuracies and cruelties, but also because it is undeniably racist. The current administration has given people a foothold to flat-out deny this, based on the seed of their own ignorance watered by the open hatred of others. Don’t let them do this.