Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016)

The big fella turned 65 this week, and as such, we had to review a movie in honor of that, and this is a film of his we've had in the can for some time--in fact, I watched this during the unplanned 4-year hiatus I had between 2015 and 2019, and was going to review it in that period, but it got clipped from Netflix, so I had to wait for it to return to streaming, and the hiatus continued. In addition to us, our friends Mitch at the Video Vacuum and Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth have covered this as well.

Kindergarten Cop 2 has Dolph as an FBI detective who, along with partner Bill Bellamy, need to find a flash drive that has the info to bring down a big time crime boss. The problem is, the guy who had it gave it to his brother, who was murdered by said baddie. As luck would have it, he hid it in his kindergarten classroom, but how could they it there? Have Dolph go undercover as a kindergarten teacher, of course! Can this line dancing, steak eating, jeans wearing down-home guy handle modern rich kid education? A young lady 30 years his junior who teaches across the hall and has a thing for him may help, right?

This worked and it didn't, if that makes sense. Some of the jokes were good, some were of the "oh kids have peanut allergies today, that's so crazy!" variety. The thing is though, the Dolph is good, and he and Bellamy work well together, so it's like, if you're going to have a mid-2010s DTV sequel of a big screen hit from the past cash grab, you could do a lot worse. The "you could do a lot better" is the whole "why did this need to be made in the first place?" which I think is a fair question, and when I finish a movie, I shouldn't have to feel like I watched something that maybe didn't even need to exist. Ultimately though, as someone who has to watch all of Dolph's movies, this was 100 minutes that wasn't as bad as I've experienced on this journey, and maybe that's the bottom line, it's not as horrible as it can get for Dolph completists.

While this is 65 tags for Dolph on the site, it's only 64 films, so he doesn't quite yet have as many films as his age, a distinction that he alone will have when he gets there on our next Dolph film review. He definitely elevates material that is more contrived than even my synopsis above will lead you to believe, material that looks like it was passed from screenwriter to screenwriter in a desperate attempt to save it. The one piece that was probably least believable was the idea that the kids would be unruly for him. I don't have many memories from kindergarten, but trying to imagine myself as a five-year-old, if Dolph walked into our classroom the last thing I'd do is act up. Interestingly enough, this is the 4th of the four films he released in 2016 that we've reviewed, and I would say this is the most paint-by-numbers cynical DTV cash grabbiest of the bunch. Welcome to Willits was a unique horror comedy where Dolph had a small part as a TV police officer; Female Fight Squad was a woman-driven actioner with Dolph taking a back seat to Amy Johnston; and Don't Kill It was another horror comedy, in this case with Dolph in the lead, but also was unique and off-beat. In that sense, I don't think we can look at this movie as a trend in his career, I think it was more a one-off, and hopefully he made enough money from it.

Anyone who grew up watching MTV in the 80s and 90s knows Bill Bellamy. I remember him at the MTV Beach House telling Montel Jordan how "This is How We Do It" was the song of that summer, and now we're closing in on 30 years since that song came out. In 1997 he tried to move into the film world with Def Jam's How to Be a Player, and while it didn't take, he's worked consistently since then, with perhaps my favorite being the modern Miami Vice remake Fastlane. He and Peter Facinelli were a great early 2000s version of Crockett and Tubbs, but I think as much as Miami Vice was ahead of its time, Fastlane as a newer version was even further ahead, and only lasted the one season. Because of that though, seeing him here was fun, and he and Dolph had great chemistry, which elevated it beyond the usual DTV cash grab sequel.

As Dolph turns 65, we're confronted with all of our 80s action stars growing older, and what that means for them as action leads. The biggest trope is the cute leading lady that they get to woo over, and like Matthew McConaughey said in Dazed and Confused, these action stars get older, and their leading ladies stay the same age. The love interest here was played by Darla Taylor, and according to IMDb she hasn't done anything since. The question is, would we as viewers be okay with it if Dolph's love interest was someone closer in age to him? Gary Daniels is only a year older than Vivica A. Fox, and that worked with them in The Wrong Child together, so it can be done. But as part of the DTV cash grab, it's about the hottest young woman they can get, give her outfits that are professional yet sexy as a teacher, and pair her with Dolph. When it's this paint-by-numbers, there's no room to paint outside the lines.

Finally, we're at a point here in our Dolph journey that each review not only requires a second paragraph, but some kind of understanding of the scope of what his numbers mean, and where we might go from here. This is the 1163rd post, and if we're counting the raw post number we can count his 65th one, which was the Van Damme Film Fest for our 400th. That means he's responsible for almost 6% of all posts. With 64 movies, he has 9 more than the next most, Gary Daniels with 55. 70 looks very likely, as we still need to do 4Got10 from his back catalog, plus Pups Alone, Section 8, and Operation Seawolf as newer movies, so we're already at 68 there. With the rate at which I review movies, and how I try to space out the stars so everyone gets reviews, the odds of anyone else, outside of Gary Daniels, getting to that number is slim. Someone like a Fred Williamson has the movies, but will I review enough of them? I'm on pace to do five of his movies this year, and he's at 25 now, so in roughly 9 years I'll get him there. I guess that means we'll see where we're at in 2031.

And with that, let's wrap this up. For me, this is a free stream for a Dolph completist only, but when you put those two elements together, it works enough to get you there. And a big happy birthday to the Babe Ruth of DTV action, Dolph Lundgren! You truly are the greatest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4763168

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