It’s a wonder, then, that this wrinkle is completely ignored as the story progresses and Reed casually pursues a relationship with Olivia ( Darla Taylor), a fellow teacher. That woman, as established in the film’s prologue, is Reed’s former lover, whom he developed true feelings for while undercover. The flash drive contains confidential info about people in witness protection programs the bad guys, a group of cartoonish Albanian gangsters who never come close to achieving the slimy menace of the original film’s Cullen Crisp, want the flash drive so they can track down the woman who’s going to testify against them. Reed’s lack of character can likely be attributed to the stakes, which are established but never interwoven into his journey. Both the kids and the school setting are ultimately inessential to the story being told, none of which seems all that concerned with Reed’s growth as a person. Sure, the kids are cute, but they’re not characters so much as set dressing. Unlike Kimble, who went from stoic to softie with the help of the kids, Reed has no discernable arc. In this film, the kids, ostensibly the raison d’etre, are essentially there to spew some cuteness. This resulted in some touching encounters that helped reveal the character’s fractured relationship with his own son. Because Schwarzenegger’s John Kimble was in pursuit of a particular child, he had to get emotionally invested in each of them. The MacGuffin, for example, is a flash drive rather than an actual kid.Īnd it’s changes like that, honestly, that make Kindergarten Cop 2 pale in comparison to its source material. Otherwise, any big deviances from the original are purely cosmetic. Kindergarten Cop 2 isn’t all that funny, but these jokes land the best, if only because it’s clear everyone’s heart is in the right place. There’s a few fun touches the film lightheartedly satirizes PC culture by casting the school as a haven of liberal progressiveness - at a date auction, for example, all genders are encouraged to bid on the suitor, whether they’re straight or not. Again, we have a student talking about vaginas (though, in this case, it’s a “bagina”). Again, we have a romance subplot with a fellow teacher. Again, that arch nemesis is trying to beat him to the punch. Again, we have bad boy enforcement official Zack Reed ( Dolph Lundgren) going undercover as a kindergarten teacher to help prosecute his arch nemesis. There’s no mention of the previous events or characters. Though billed as a sequel, Kindergarten Cop 2 feels more like a remake. It can also, unfortunately, be Kindergarten Cop 2, a broad and ultimately pointless exercise that seems to exist solely to remind audiences of how surprisingly good the original was. Yes, movies of its ilk live and die by the handling of their gimmicks, but Kindergarten Cop, while no Oscar contender, proves that the formula can be massaged into something eminently enjoyable. Credit whoever you like for its success: Reitman deftly balanced the opposing tones, star Arnold Schwarzenegger infused his cyborgian superman with genuine vulnerability, and composer Randy Edelman’s score helped convey a concrete sense of place. For all of its innate kitsch and gimmickry, Ivan Reitman’s Kindergarten Cop, the story of a gritty cop who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher, works to this day as both a fish-out-of-water comedy and a pulse-pounding action flick.
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