Uh oh! The Police Academy franchise enjoys a wretched, pestilent reputation as the nadir of comedy, a tired and overlong prolongation of undeserving careers and bad writing. It remains, somehow even now two decades later, a punch line when something like “The Simpsons” wants to make good jokes about bad jokes. But let us try to give these movies a fair share, and let our (my) eventual distaste come about naturally. [Putting on the kid gloves.]
Ah, 1984’s Police Academy! Orwell was right, you know, that year saw a horrid, all-seeing police system spring up to repress citizens. Or…at least it did in one unnamed, fictional city, which I’d call Toronto, except these are all clearly U.S. police officers. For under the progressive leadership of a new female [gasp!] mayor (also fictional and unseen), Big Nameless City has just expanded its police hiring policy to include all wastrels, layabouts, and slobboids.
Actually, the policy seems to be an early sop to political correctness, to correct the department’s shoddy “only white, upper-class males” policy – and don’t worry, Police Academy dutifully contradicts this “all Johnsons” fact when the opportunity for a joke/sex scene arises. But the sudden influx of, god forbid, females and negroes and fat people is just the premise. In truth, Police Academy is one of the 1980s’ revered “slobs vs. snobs” comedies, where it’s always the privileged blue bloods against a motley crew of lovable goons. This originated, perhaps, in Animal House (at least the later movement, for it can be traced back at least to the Marx Bros.), which tells such a tale where it makes the most sense: In school. Other movies came about…Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, arguably Ghostbusters; Bill Murray seems the patron saint of the form. Each one reapplied the concept to a new locale: camp, golf courses, the Army…um, ghosts.
And now Police Academy, an off-model comedy of the type, produced by a totally unrelated crew, applies the model to, well, to a police academy. In essence it’s Stripes with blue uniforms. As such, it’s not nearly as successful, though nor is it the worst of the type (Meatballs Part II). It’d be too easy, and incorrect, to blame director Hugh Wilson for this minor fault, though he did also cowrite. That leaves the cast, filling in for a ginormous Bill Murray-shaped chasm.
Police Academy’s cast is itself ginormous, filling that gap with quantity. So let’s meet the incompetent new cadets, the foolish flock of paltry police wannabes who form Team Slob:
Steve Guttenberg (as Carey Mahoney): Mahoney is the heart and soul of Police Academy, every single one of ‘em (through Part Four), the sort of relatable audience surrogate to the assorted other misfits. As a part of Mahoney’s relatability, he isn’t even a screw-up like the rest. Instead, he’s a criminal (just like us!), whose parole agreement involves joining the Police Academy why the hell not. Thus, Mahoney cannot quit, and he cannot be kicked out – making him somewhat the Randall P. MacMurphy of the police force (OH NO, so One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a “slobs vs. snobs” comedy too?!). Oh, and Mahoney is a prankster, a wry conman who directs laffs elsewhere.
Guttenberg was a noted comedian of the ‘80s, what with Three Men and a Baby and Short Circuit, and to be honest, I don’t see the appeal. At least he never hams it up for a laugh, but he doesn’t do a whole lot else to impress. As the potential “straight man,” he doesn’t interact with the more grotesque characters all that much. I get something of a Joe Piscopo vibe from Guttenberg, and not the “SNL” Piscopo, but the late period, unsuccessful movie career Piscopo. Only bland. Only…okay, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Michael Winslow (as Larvell Jones): As proof, now and forever, that Police Academy CAN offer up something of quality, may I present the “Man of 10,000 Sound Effects.” Winslow is a genuinely funny comic, known for his ability to create sound effects so convincing, it’s easy to attribute his noises to post-production Foley work. Actually, noises were Winslow’s gimmick from long before Police Academy, such as in a couple of Cheech & Chong movies. He essays the same basic role in Police Academy, getting his own isolated noise-based routines on occasion. In form, Winslow is a bit like Harpo Marx – proving the Marxes connect back to this movement. No wonder he is often cited with reverence while these movies are otherwise dismissed.
Kim Cattrall (as Karen Thompson): Wait, Kim Cattrall is in these things?! Name me one other performer with both Police Academy and “Sex and the City” to her (or his, possibly) résumé. Actually, I’m not sure how Thompson is supposed to qualify as a slob, like, at all. Really, she seems competent, in shape, and mostly devoid of personality. But movies need romantic interests! Yes, all movies need a tossed-off love story, and Guttenberg needs a reason to stay. And with Cattrall lookin’ nearly as good as in Big Trouble in Little China, who’s to complain?
Donovan Scott (as Leslie Barbara): Ah, now we move into the promised ranks of broad, caricatured grotesques. And with every large group like this, you need a large guy. So there’s the “fat guy,” with a little bit of spineless effeminacy thrown in for spice. Basically, it’s Animal House’s Flounder, with age.
Bubba Smith (as Moses Hightower): So there’s the fat guy. Hightower, meanwhile, is the large guy. Yes, he’s not fat, simply scaled up on a par with Richard Kiel, only black – and Police Academy IS an ethnically diverse cast. Props for that. And props, I suppose, for the gigantism-based series of slapstick one-off gags Hightower inspires. And while I said I could only place Cattrall, I was taking about movies. Bubba Smith is separately famous, for among a cast filled with C-list comedians, here’s a freaking Super Bowl winner! What does it say that, Winslow excepted, Smith is the funniest member of this ensemble?
Of course, Hightower is a peak physical specimen. How’d he, like Thompson, ever get sequestered into the loser brigade? Well, they had the jokes first, who needs logic?
Moving more quickly now…
David Graf (as Eugene Tackleberry): The insane one. The gun nut. That is all. “Simpsons” characters are more rounded than this. (The rest of Graf’s career: Oh, mostly TV. You know, “M*A*S*H,” “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “The A-Team,” assorted “Star Treks.” He’s dead now.)
Andrew Rubin (as George Martin): At first it seems George is fulfilling the affirmative action roster for the Latino, what with the only Hispanic personality type a film like this can dream up – the sex-crazed lover. But it turns out he’s just a guy with a put-upon fake accent – possibly due to a late-stage rewrite due to Rubin’s bad, bad accent. Oh well.
Marion Ramsey (as Laverne Hooks): She is timid and has a soft voice.
Bruce Mahler (as Douglas Fackler): Is married. This only plays into the opening sequence, really, so from then on Fackler is simply “the generic odd-looking guy in the background of most shots.”
Lastly, Brant Von Hoffman and Scott Thomson (as Kyle Blankes and Chad Copeland): The two genuinely good cadets of this specific platoon…Is “platoon” the right word in a police unit? They’re here as ringers, as ex-military henchmen, to ensure proper hazing of the other mooks (especially Mahoney). Which is as good a chance as any to segue over to Team Snob, to discuss the cartoonish, one-dimensional antagonists our cartoonish, one-dimensional protagonists are up against.
Mahoney’s greatest enemy is G. W. Bailey (as Lt. Thaddeus Harris), sort of a petty taskmaster drill sergeant type, only a short while before Full Metal Jacket would show ‘em how it’s done. As the man primarily charged with eliminating most “undesirable” new recruits (i.e. people with vaginas or dark skin tone – classy!), you’d expect Harris to be contrasted to the lunatics under his wing. But that wouldn’t be good for the komedy, when the writers and cast haven’t the mastery of tone a John Landis possesses, so instead Harris seems as grotesque and prone-to-goofballishness as anyone else, really. (And Bailey, like so much of the cast, hails from TV…the same shows, even.)
Aiding Harris is Leslie Easterbrook (as Sgt. Debbie Callahan – Dirty Harry reference!). See when it benefits ‘em, they ignore how the former police force would never allow a woman in – for Debbie is, in case you missed it, a woman. This is mostly for the sex – and I’m gettin’ to that. Callahan’s particular caricature is something of the Ilsa type…or at least she would be, if this bunch was familiar with Ilsa. (As for the Stripes people, director Ivan Reitman produced a freaking Ilsa movie, so there’s that.)
Leading the entire Police Academy is George Gaynes (as Cmndt. Eric Lassard). He is the white-haired, older authority figure type that’d be played, ‘twere this a slightly different sort of film, by Leslie Nielson (or barring that, Lloyd Bridges). In an ideal Police Academy, Lassard would be the Dean Wormer/Judge Smails/whomever-it-was-in-Stripes role, the hateful authority figure just waiting have the starch taken out of his shirt, or some such. But Police Academy is pretty sloppy, forsooth, and only a couple of minutes really add up to that here. Besides, it’s a big, big, big, big cast, and there’s not enough time to craft loving, quality jokes for everybody, not when it takes so much time setting up basic types.
Well, that’s the setup. Losers train, jerks train them, losers eventually do well. The end. There is little attempt at a coherent story within this, but that’s part and parcel of the “slobs vs. snobs” formula. Instead, these movies are delivery systems for jokes, gags, lampooning, pastiche, satire, parody, slapstick, farce, gross out, pun, double entendre, silliness, idiocy, and tits. To that end, Police Academy must be gauged by how effectively it delivers its jokes.
Well, we’ve already addressed the cast, which is mostly responsible for whatever happens. Jokes are mostly independent. A true head of comedic steam never builds, and for every amusing Winslow scene, there are just as many unsuccessful jokes concerning, say, the gang’s general inability at the firing range, or the obstacle course…Every single one of these scenes appeared in Stripes, and in better form as well. No, there is a general studied approach to the prefect delivery of a basic gag in Stripes, whereas Police Academy prefers a loosey-goosey approach, scattershotting not just the amount of gags (ala Airplane!), but how they’re told.
Take one of the centerpiece jokes, where the evil cadets (Blankes and Copeland) indirectly ask Mahoney (via Barbara, and just ignore these parentheticals now) where the leave party is taking place. Mahoney falsely directs them to 1060 W. Addison, which happens to be Wrigley Field – No, wait, that’s Blues Brothers! Nah, Mahoney sends ‘em to the Blue Oyster Bar, a leather and bondage gay bar. And in 1984, it must’ve been enough to present a risqué, unflattering, barn-broad portrayal of the homosexuals, and call it a day.
Anyway, Blankes and Copeland arrive in a “bear” bar. Joke over, right? Especially seeing as we cut away to the real party, a beach party out of the opening to Jaws, only minus a horrific shark attack (so nothing like the opening of Jaws). Wrong! After watching Steve Guttenberg kiss Kim Cattrall for a little while, it’s back to the Blue Oyster Bar, to watch the continued humiliation of these two jarheads-turned-pigs.
Actually, they keep going back to that moment, like the cutaways during the double date in Some Like It Hot, only again I’ve referenced a better movie which in no way resembles Police Academy, and I am now officially being unfair to this franchise.
Anyway, that about sums up the “how” of Police Academy’s joke-telling skills.
It doesn’t sum of the “what,” “who,” “where,” “when” and “whuh.” In tone (and this is not at all in accordance with what I’ve assumed of the later Police Academies), the original is a solid, gross-out R-rated vulgar raunchfest – much in the vein of, say, Animal House, which it starts to mine, having already tapped out Stripes. Police Academy showcases a reasonable bevy of naked tits (lamentably, not Cattrell’s). Hell, it even has a desultory shower peeping scene straight out of Belushi’s ladder bit. In light of the overall comedic atmosphere of the early ‘80s, it is understandable for this element to exist, yet it still surprises.
The highlight of Police Academy’s devotion to filthy, filthy jokes is a blowjob. The scenario: A random whore winds up hidden in a podium, where Commandant Lassard speechifies. Presented with a man’s groin before her face, this contextless prostitute does what all would…
There’s actually nothing more extreme on screen than those two Blogger-safe images. You’d find such a thing in a (PG-13) Adam Sandler movie nowadays, but it’s at least a change of pace from the head-clonking – Oh yes, there is head-clonking, and other such foolish slapstick up the wazoo! That goes without saying, I suppose, for that’s what I’ve always associated with Police Academy.
But enough about fellatio. Police Academy needs to end, and to create the false impression of a story having happened. It must put its heroes at their lowest ebb, then fashion a climax for them to solve. This is the point when many a funny movie suddenly obtains a conscience, a sense of self-seriousness. To Police Academy’s benefit, it does not do this. Oh sure, it does offer up a few Academy dismissals (not Citizen Kane, I mean Police Academy dismissals) – namely Hightower and Mahoney. Still, these events are told in the form of jokes, not drama – lazy, sloppy, obvious humor, still, but humor nonetheless. You gotta respect the film for a devotion to its own nature.
That out of the way, climax time! This thing comes about even more randomly than sudden, penis-crazed prostitutes. Basically, a riot breaks out, all because Fackler tosses an apple. It’s a series of escalations even Final Destination’s Death would scoff at, leading suddenly to mass lootings and destruction. Imagine if you lived in such a universe, where widespread public discord could be sewn in arbitrary service of a cartoonish joke!
The resulting chaos rather nicely parallels the climactic parade assault from, yes, Animal House, but with genial silliness replacing genuine anarchy. The cadets, and only the goofball cadets (they forget now the Police Academy has dozens of non-screwball trainees as well) go to aid the real police in this disaster, and somehow become the only ones dealing with it. Randomness rules, so a gunman I don’t recognize from prior (though chalk it up to my own laziness as a viewer, perhaps) takes Harris hostage, then Mahoney. Mahoney and Hightower earn redemption, deserving faces are punched, and all ends happily. Though with as much genial lunacy as ever.
Police Academy is not, in some senses, a bad comedy. The jokes are always legible, and I’ve lately seen enough truly awful things to learn to appreciate that. They’re never high-reaching, like the greatest “slobs vs. snobs” comedies. It’s sort of the baseline for the formula, which may well explain why Police Academy was so popular with audiences in 1984 – who were then more accepting of a form which was somewhat niche (though superior) when Animal House and Caddyshack did it. Police Academy was the 6th most successful film in the U.S. that year, with an $80 million gross, and that’s no 1980s chump change.
But it’s eternally true that a film’s long term reputation doesn’t relate to its initial box office. I’ll cite my countless foreign friends who are convinced The Big Lebowski must’ve been a gigantic hit in theaters, given the reverence we all hold for it now. This ain’t the case. While the greater “slobs vs. snobs” movies are cherished now as comedy classics, Police Academy is not. And yet it’s the one which engendered sequels (though there is Caddyshack II, I suppose), because it was the more important film at the time. Sequels, when poor, can do a whole lot to diminish a film’s standings, and I anticipate we’ll see that happening soon enough.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 2 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
• No. 3 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
• No. 4 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
• No. 5 Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988)
• No. 6 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989)
• No. 7 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)
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