Police Academy: Mission to Moscow is a comedic apocalypse. I may never laugh again.
Okay, starting at the beginning…In 1991, the Soviet Union disbanded into several distinct, autonomous nations, as Communism was abandoned and all international strife ceased throughout the world for the entire duration of history. At least, that’s a simplified version of the story, simplified because I think this movie destroyed my brain. As a result, Russia and its fellows became open to the west (and closed to Cuba). A grand new capitalist territory arose, and was dutifully exploited by those masters of trade, the mobsters.
Legitimate businessmen also took an interest in presenting Russia to the world. To that end, foreign companies were allowed to do business with the former USSR. Among them were the movie studios, eager to present the historical glories of Russia, long withheld from the West. Some great movies came of this union, such as GoldenEye…and also Mission to Moscow is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better than it.
Okay, so a sense of humor had been banned, punishable by execution, during Russia’s wild Communist phase. (Excepting some of Dostoevsky’s better fart jokes, the pre-Soviets had little use for levity either.) Funniness became a major import the same as anything else. But to a culture that was just acclimatizing themselves to this strange new non-dour form of human communication, you couldn’t do anything too sophisticated. Hell, even the carefully honed rubber face antics of an ambassador such as Jim Carrey would’ve flown right over the Cossacks’ fuzzy-hatted heads. What they needed was America’s lowest form of comedy, something so childish, juvenile, and without merit, it wasn’t even in active production.
They needed Police Academy.
So soulless Police peddler Paul Manslansky dusted off his abandoned cop cash cow, dormant these past five long years, to show to the Russians the artful U.S. stylings of idiocy.
Or maybe Hollywood studios really intended to severe diplomatic ties with Russia, because there’s no more disrespectful act than bestowing Police Academy upon a nation! Perhaps it was a desperate gambit to get the Commies reinstated as acceptable villains, lest action movies resort to nothing but terrorists and drug dealers and the Nazis still, just because. At any rate, there seems to have been absolutely no serious effort at delivering a quality product.
For many franchises, a five year dry spell (when formerly they’d been making one a year) would be just the opportunity to rethink operations, to identify problems and devise solutions. There’s a reason reboots exist, and why they’re often so distinct from their predecessors. Such thinking totally escaped the Police Academy masterminds (who, keep in mind, took five entries to even happen upon “location switching” as a sequel gambit). Rather, Mission to Moscow finds the series further emaciated than ever, nearly all of 30 or so featured actors having jumped ship, save for a truly squalid roster of dregs.
Can you believe that is (with one exception) the whole team of supercops, once so proud? Joining the stalwart Commandant Lassard (George Gayne), we have but Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf’s eyeballs), Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow’s voice) and Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook’s tits). Added in completely as human-shaped grout is newbie Kyle Connors…wait, isn’t that a James Cameron character? Nope, it’s shrimpy actor Charlie Schlatter, eagerly aborting his career in its infancy by appearing in a Police Academy. He brings nothing to the table.
And Thaddeus Harris (G. W. Bailey) is around too, but with the cast more depleted than Charlie Sheen at a sorority house, he no longer serves the series’ role of token villain. Nah, he’s simply a part of the team now, though still the designated butt-monkey (as the City Under Siege problem regarding cast humiliation and joke density remains).
So these…six total characters head out to Moscow (on a mission), at the behest of their Russian counterparts. Why have some Wherever City cops gone out there, you ask? What’s wrong with hiring, say, international agents, you know, spies or counter-terrorists or something. Well, it makes as much sense as making a Police Academy in Russia in the first place, so I’ll have to accept the realism of this decision by fiat.
Of course, they’re not asked to come unintentionally defecate upon a massive, well-armed nation willy-nilly. Nope, there’s a Russian problem to be solved. Gangsters! Specifically, the vile Konstantine Konali, aka Константин Конали, aka a slumming Ron Perlman (i.e. Hellboy!) is a gangster. Whom the Ruskies have never been able to arrest. Oh, and in totally unrelated news (for now), Конали has designed a new video game – in a sign of the utmost creativity, simply called The Game – which has swept the world by storm. In fact, it’s called the most addictive video game ever, appealing to both hardcore gamers and biddling old grannies. So…an exceedingly addictive game, come out of Russia? I know this game (and am myself addicted, as certain websites can attest.
Oh boy, Tetris satire in 1994? This is gonna be greeeeeeeeat!
Actually, Конали’s The Game ain’t Tetris. In fact, it seems as though the makers of Mission to Moscow (so busy using that Police Academy brand name as an excuse to be completely shitty filmmakers overall) know bupkis about video games! Not an uncommon issue in film. For The Game has no evident play mechanics, awful graphics even by 1994 standards, stars a cartoon bear (named Boris, natch), and is simply drenched in simplistic Russian signifiers. Exactly the sort of thing which would revolutionize the industry! It looks like no video game I’ve ever played, and I loves me some retro gaming. (At least Конали is one letter [and entire alphabet] off from “Konami.”)
Look at me! The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain, and I’m complaining about the in-flight meal. This movie is one lengthy (82 ungodly minutes) cinematic genocide, and I’m dwelling on The Game.
Well…let’s look at Конали’s scheme with The Game. Like a proto Mark Zuckerberg, that little douchebag, Конали intends to install a worm virus into every copy of The Game, then secretly access everyone’s computer files worldwide. Okay, as supergenius hacker ploys goes, this is distinctly somewhere beneath Live Free and Die Hard. Besides, you’d think, with The Game making over a billion dollars (thus eliminating most any reason for Конали to be a petty cyber thief), Конали would’ve already installed his worm. Or at least, you know, ensured it was feasible! Talk about doing things backwards, just to give six screwball U.S. cops waaaaaay out of their jurisdiction the generous time to foil him.
Actually, these six Mensa rejects aren’t getting too much accomplished on their end either. Despite arriving at Russia with full knowledge of Конали’s life, habits, what-have-you, instead they sorta just go about policing the local Moscovites. It’s the usual Police Academy “do whatever damn time wasting thing you can for 80% of the movie” thing, as five years off haven’t revealed any new jokes. It depresses me. And the setting change offers no new opportunities (beyond occasional ADR lines like “The red zone is for the Communist Party” – whuh?!), as otherwise this is just a worse replay of City Under Siege – it’s amazing how much worse this one manages to be. At least the backgrounds are nice to look at, as Moscow is a lovely city – Russia’s desire for Mission to Moscow to be a nice vacation advertisement pretty much works, or would if anyone saw this movie.
Also Claire Forlani is nice to look at. Yes, Claire Forlani is in this thing, as Katrina, Kyle’s love interest – we knew such B.S. was coming, but we didn’t know how much time it would eat up, in favor of jokes which never occur. And really, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani?! Even with everyone bailing series ship in their best Steve Guttenberg impression, this thing has a surprisingly impressive cast!
…Oh, you have no idea.
Now, many moments in Mission to Moscow made me wail and groan in notable pain. Many times I even paused the movie for a strong 15 minutes, to regain my composure. But there was only one moment where I screamed aloud, at the sheer injustice of what was on screen.
No, Christopher Lee, no! Why are you, Sir Christopher Lee, playing Commanant Alexandrei Nikolaivich Rakov, or Александр Николаевич Раков, in a motherfucking Police Academy movie?! GAAAAAH!...At least we can be reassured Александр Николаевич Раков isn’t around much, doesn’t make a fool of himself (a true rarity here), and Lee would have a part in two of the largest trilogies of the ‘00s.
Also, the Bolshoi appears, forever ruining whatever connection Russia’s finest ballet troupe had to sophistication or quality.
In all this bitching, I’ve barely addressed the one reason Mission to Moscow exists: the jokes, and how they relate to Russia. Well, the jokes are bad. I wish to address a few specifics. For example, there are a few cartoonish cadets at the Russian academy who become unofficial additions to Lassard’s group. They are acrobats, and quite skillful; their “joke” is that they endlessly make absurd noises all the time, like a “Whoop whoop whoop!” but without the Stooges’ wit. This sums up the series-wide Police Academy approach to yucks, that crossed eyes and flailing limbs are an adequate substitute for a well-timed deadpan quip.
Meanwhile, Конали sends his assassins to off these innocuous American police officers. Thus begins a scene where Jones survives murder attempts, without realizing it. Now, this is a functional comedic setup. Certain Pink Panther movies excel at seeing their hero improbably survive deadly assassins by sheer luck. But in the Police Academy galaxy, Jones’ survival comes instead from an accumulated shared incompetence on the part of himself, the gangsters, and the public at large. Honestly, Police Academy is so desperate for a laugh, it has its extras mug like…sufficient simile not found.
Of course, it’s difficult to mine humor out of your cast’s imbecility when the series has already somehow graduated them to most competent. As in City Under Siege, that leaves only Harris to endure sensible slapstick. Except they bung this one up too. He creeps around under Moscow’s feces-ridden sewers (which is a failure of the “travelogue” concept right there), attempting to listen in on…whomever. A few gags are recognizably ones formerly performed by Inspector Dreyfus in assorted Pink Panthers, as Harris has always been a watery ersatz Dreyfus. That’s okay enough, I suppose, nothing terribly hateful. But that ignores how low this mess can go.
Recall the first Police Academy, how its one-time devotion to raunch yielded the franchise-best joke of Lassard receiving fellatio in mid-speech. This adherence to sexual humor dropped away long ago, but as comedy devolves long enough, we return to tasteless jokes, only not as ribaldry, but as scatology. Mission to Moscow resorts to making pee and poo, in hopes some two-year-old watching this might accidently titter. We no longer get naked human female breasts on screen, but somehow this PG-rated atrocity is allowed a long, unedited, loving close-up of a urinating dog’s genitalia. This is like goddamned Cremaster 1, this is!
Well, I tire of Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, with no desire to examine how ill-advised its devotion to, say, crossdressing also is…
Needless to say, audiences had also grown thoroughly sick of these movies. Perhaps fearful that even the slightest box office might encourage Paul Maslansky to keep churning out more of these abominations, Mission to Moscow made a phenomenally feeble $126,247 in theaters! Way to round it up to the nearest single dollar bill! For a mainstream Hollywood movie, proudly distributed by Warner Brothers, this is just dreadful. Something called Generic Movie: Brand X could do better, by sheer dint of being a movie. Police Academy had negative box office clout in 1994, the accumulated lessons of six prior lessening sequels learned. Assuming a $7 ticket price, fewer than 20,000 people saw Mission to Moscow – numerically, that’s roughly equivalent to how many voters on IMDb have granted this an over-generous 2.6. Which means hardly anyone was witness to the ultimate ignominy endured by Lassard’s troupe.
Theatrically, such a performance signals franchise death on a par with 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. It is a testament to the sheer Sisyphean endurance of the Police Academy name, and Paul Maslansky’s blind insistence, that this is not the end of the story.
Oh, there were no more theatrical Police Academies, thank every deity and supernatural entity holy and pagan, real and fictional, ever to exist! Rather, assorted spinoffs dried whatever final unidentifiable juices remained in this husk. Despite a questionable cartoon series having come and gone, another TV show came about: “Police Academy: The Series.” This thing was live action, with a mighty one season to its credit. Whichever network was responsible, that information has disappeared since 1997, due no doubt to understandable shame.
And with the steady culling of the cast, by now (over a decade in) only one desperate performer remains. It saddens me that it’s Michael Winslow, that this genuinely funny man became so connected to the Police Academy series that he could never leave it. So his Larvell Jones remains at the titular Police Academy, as the show examines a new batch of recruits. This is a somewhat understandable TV premise, even if it differs in no way from the central movie premise. And yet…Maslansky stayed on to write for the show, so the series’ guiding voice which forever insisted upon idiocy remained. Lending the show an IMDb rank of 4.5, which is like the TV equivalent of a 2.6.
There was also a theme park stunt show.
And now we pass over another decade and a half, in a world mercifully free of Police Academies crossing the airwaves and keeping the aliens away. Like the return of the Dark Lord Sauron, evil murmurs stir as mankind forgets the evils it once endured. Maslansky, not one to ever say quit (I wonder what his girlfriends have made of him), continues to insist upon a Police Academy reboot, as studios respond with tactful “mehs.” Though anything less than a shotgun to the face is a “yes” in Maslansky’s mind, so we get threatened on occasion with promises of another.
With Ghostbusters III often threatened upon us, with the promise of a “new generation” replacing disinterested old timers, the same option exists for Police Academy. Chances are slim such a mess could be rebirthed, as Maslansky has been pursuing it now since 2006, unable to raise the financing or deliver an actual script. Let the insane producer ramblings of a desperate, neglected soul echo off throughout the internet. I can only respond with a heartfelt plea, to leave well enough alone. Do not tarnish further whatever remains of Part One’s legacy. Do no set the comedy rights movement back centuries. People, your main weapon in preventing more Police Academies is the weapon of indifference. Show them we do not care, that this is at least one 1980s franchise we do not need to see restarted. We must endure!
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Police Academy (1984)
• 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)
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