Police Academy, No. 6 - Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989)

“Fighting is one thing, but bad jokes is where I draw the line.”
- Lt. Moses Hightower, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege

The comedic devolution of the Police Academy series is nearly complete. The first Police Academy was an adult-skewing “slobs vs. snobs” comedy, perhaps a little too reliant upon other such movies, but at least its heart was in the right place.

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege is in contrast a film which would best appeal to a mentality under 5-years-old. What sort of audience could be expected to keep along with these movies? Was any of City Under Siege’s viewership familiar with the first?

For all the Police Academy turnover, in terms of writers, directors, hell, even the cast, it is a surprise that City Under Siege comes from the noodles of Part One’s writers, Neal Israel and Pat Proft. You’d think the men partly responsible for the original festival of raunch and podia fellatio would be able to reinstall some purpose into this crumbling series, to ensure longevity through a reaffirmation of bad taste in favor of unsophisticated bumbling.

But whatever audience there was for Police Academies in 1989 knew nothing of that tone, so instead the screenwriters crank out a children’s film, for all intents and purposes. And even the jokes are few on the ground – in terms of sheer comic density, this is the laziest of the bunch by far, and even a manic wreck like Citizens on Patrol had an energy to it. But despite a lack of identifiable jokes (rather, it’s assumed returning characters acting in character will be funny in and of itself), City Under Siege follows a peculiarly illogical stream-of-consciousness mentality which could only come of a childish mindset which finds It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World too subtle.

The premise: Criminals commit crimes. The cops must stop them.

The premise, with a little more detail: The Wilson Heights Gang, a trio of terrifying middle age white guys named Ace, Flash and Ox (which also sums up their personalities) is committing a spree of robberies throughout an…an unnumbered precinct, because a 6-movie series which could never name its own city surely cannot be expected to assign a double-digit number. Whatever, it’s Harris’ precinct (G. W. Bailey, why?!). Caving to political pressure from the mayor, Harris does the unthinkable, and recruits Commandant Lassard’s team (George Bailey, for when Leslie Nielsen is unavailable) to stop the crime wave.

In its foundations, City Under Siege is nothing unique in the annals of Police Academy, most closely resembling Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment in structure – and that one had been the outlying black sheep, for a complete lack of Academy-based foofaraw. So it’s a movie about police doing police work, and you’d think a franchise with the word “Police” in the title could manage that more often than 1/3rd of the time!


To this lukewarm puddle of generic, stale rehashing, the cast appears completely unchanged…practically. Among the 11 leads, all have been in former entries, and many of them. Let’s see, how does this go…

EVERY movie: Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith), Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf), Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey), and of course Commandant Lassard. So five of ‘em in six movies. Oh, and Commissioner Henry Hurst too (George R. Robertson).

Five movies: Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook). As a Police Academy fixture, she was lacking from the mostly Academy-free First Assignment. Also Lt. Proctor (Lance Kinsey), because he wasn’t in Part One.

Four movies: Captain Harris, seeing as the role of “self-promoting, bigoted, hateful, misdirected antagonist policeman” was filled by a character named Mauser in First Assignment and Back in Training, though for all intents and purposes we’ve had the same basic guy in every movie.

Three movies: Well, Douglas Fackler (Bruce Mahler) sat out Parts Three through Five, due to general uselessness. He rejoins his team here, in the officially rotating final slot recently vacated by “House” Conklin, and with an actual schtick this time: He is disaster prone. More on that anon.

Two movies (yeah): Just Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy), because he was Assignment Miami Beach’s Steve Guttenberg replacement, here transplanting from Miami to Never Once Named City and edging even slightly more into Guttenbergian territory – i.e. the smart, “normal” one whose appearance bores me. And who has a subtle mania for glue and potentially-lethal anti-Harris pranks, unprovoked.


This is what they’ve got to work with, and without a significant-enough premise (i.e. a location switch) to accommodate new gags for old gagmen. How will City Under Siege continue to wring sour goo from this tapped-out…entity? Simple! There are no jokes.

…Okay, that’s not fair. The good guys (so basically everyone listed above, excepting Harris and Proctor) are no longer allowed to act the fools. There’s been a subtle (in Police Academy terms) evolution of Lassard’s team throughout, as they gain competence, edging ever nearer to being genuine police-humans. So no more do they look the fools, even when they might absentmindedly screw things up. No, through their absentmindedness, either they succeed (say, foiling a crime inadvertently), or wreak devastation upon Harris and his entire benighted existence…or seriously injure third party passersby. That is mostly Fackler’s department, as his “joke” is to essentially explode anyone near him who is not a returning cast member.

With this upturning of what is comedically allowable, the only butt of the joke (excepting Fackler’s untold collateral) is the duo of Harris and Proctor. Sure, you might say, these characters have been suffering at the hands of the protagonists ever since Part One. What’s new? Well, they still endure such vengeance, doled out by the hands of a cruel and unjust pagan god also known as series producer Paul Maslansky. But far more often now, it is their own fault when mishaps hap. The series has been edging in this direction, but it’s hard to laugh at a bumbling comic antagonist in the Harris mold, when he no longer deserves any sort of comeuppance.

Take for instance an assignment this sub-Abbott & Costello duo is granted, ostensibly as an effort to sniff out the Wilson Heights Gang. They become undercover window washers. Now, the Harris of Part One (let us ignore Proctor’s lifelong imbecility, which earns him “villainhood” while it’s earned most other leads adoration) was infinitely competent; he’d succeed at this chore with flying colors, unless Steve Guttenberg came along and upended him. By Part Six, Harris managed to self-inflict pratfalls and fall off the building. On his own! I understand the hero/villain dynamic insists all laughter be at Harris’ expense, but this is conceptually impure.


The strange thing is, none of the other characters are treated any more seriously, they just aren’t themselves the source of jokes. So, for instance, Hightower’s strength is still ridiculously exaggerated. Jones can still use his voice to perfectly replicate any imaginable noise. Tackleberry is still an unreconstructed gun nut. Et cetera. (Old hat.) But now, these traits are treated somewhat like minor superpowers, possibly in response to how the cartoon “Police Academy” went about its business during its two-season run of inanity. Boy, seeing people triumph due to caricatured, one-dimensional, cartoonish properties – that is what makes City Under Siege seem most like a kids’ movie, as even its story elements buy into the ridiculousness with a straight face. But in an unamusing way.

So City Under Siege severely under-delivers in terms of comic density. How does it fill out its time? With plot, which is verily a bold new experiment for Police Academy. From the get go we have a villain, not a comic grotesque like Part Two’s Zed, or the “idiots lose bag, must get bag” tomfoolery of Part Five, but distinct foes working for an unidentified Mastermind, himself a sort of cheapjack variation on Number One in Thunderball. And their scheme is a convoluted one, necessitating Nick’s fullest mental powers – because they only now postulate that Nick is a little brainiac.


Basically, the Wilson Heights Gang intends a real estate scam, to devalue property all along a rail line, then buy it up cheap and make a profit later. Actually, it appears much simpler here than how City Under Siege parses out this info. The weirdness comes from the Gang’s efforts to devalue. Initially, it seems they’re accomplishing this through a spree of unmotivated, random burglaries. (Ah, jewel thieves, the default villain of all bad crime comedies! Also some good ones.)

But when the Gang creates a neighborhood-wide blackout one fine evening, resulting in rioting and looting that’s have some punch to ‘em had this been filmed in L.A. sometime after 1993, we realize this is the moment property values plummet (eh, that or they could wait until 2008). This renders all their crimes up ‘til now totally purposeless. Rather, those robberies were only good for getting the cops suspicious, for directing the story – Woe to the plotline which forces events into place to give its protagonists a leg up.

Their dastardly schemes fall apart even more towards the end – Oh someone strangulate me now! I’m dissecting the plot holes in a Police Academy sequel! The Mastermind turns out to also be the Mayor (Kenneth Mars, a genuinely funny man who was in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and The Producers – and I spent much of this movie with my jaw agape like the audiences in that picture). So…the Mayor is using his political position for corrupt personal gain? Yeesh, he should’ve moved to Chicago! It turns out he’s even on his second term, which totally doesn’t jibe chronologically with the newly-appointed female mayor posited at the start of Police Academy, a mere five years earlier – But these are the sorts of minor errors which just prove I’ve been following these dreadful atrocities closer than the filmmakers were.

Okay, so the stupid thing about the Mayor being the genius behind the blackout: He appointed Lassard’s crew to stop the crime spree. He is only foiled because he told the heroes to do so! GAAAAAH!


Alright, so much of the movie spools along joke-lightly, awkwardly arranging the plot elements so Nameless Mayor can have his mighty blackout in Unnamed City. Whatever comedy there is does not play well, for familiar reasons: Apart from Part One’s Hugh Wilson, every Police Academy director comes from a TV background, and it shows. Peter Bonerz is no exception, with a misunderstanding of the necessities of feature length comic timing. Though he does provide the heartiest (i.e. only) laugh of the picture: His name. Ah, unintentional lulz!

There’s a little more comic goodness on display, in fact, and I’d be remiss not to mention it. “Man of 10,000 Sound Effects” Michael Winslow totally redeems himself, after a couple of entries of coasting on his old material. How does he do that? Well, mid-blackout, he settles down a rowdy comedy club – by performing his patented standup routine. You know what, movie, you’re in dire straits when the actor, left to his own devices, is infinitely funnier than you are.


As a counter example, here’s what the writers do with Winslow’s vocal mechanics: In a fight against Flash (which is staged more like an actual fight than anything attempting humor, where I mostly cannot even I.D. joke attempts), Winslow’s Jones dresses up like a robot. (Don’t ask.) He pulls a sort of RoboCop routine, and thus Flash flees. Because in these movies, a man can legitimately think he is fighting an android. Because every Police Academy character is gullible, and dim. This is an example of a joke stretched too far, as all the obvious applications for Winslow’s abilities dried up long ago.


The general tone of their fight – ridiculous, unbelievable, but never trying to be humorous – extends into the entire climax. Like many a Police Academy sequel, the climax is an excuse to let loose with a chase scene too outrageous for even a Roger Moore film. Here, it’s a three-way car chase, between a cherry picker, a municipal bus…and Bigfoot (the monster truck, not the monster). This is just strangeness for its own sake. And it all plays out like the stupid version of that one chase in Terminator 3, our heroes causing untold scads of collateral damage to no one’s concern, until it ends.


Until the movie as a whole just up and ends, shortly after the Mayor’s confession fashions a devastating black hole of logic.

It’s hard to say Police Academy 6: City Under Siege represents, artistically, the point at which these movies should have stopped. They shouldn’t have started in the first place. No, accepting producer Maslansky had dedicated himself to a one-per-year schedule, come inspiration or story or no, an end to the Police Academy movies would only be justified by poor box office take. Well, it seems by Part Six, hardly a moron remained among American filmgoers, as a $11 million gross marked the stopping point. Profitability was no longer to be had, at least not at such a breakneck pace. The series went into a five year hiatus, nearly as long as the time separating Parts One and Six already. It broke that silence at last, astoundingly making City Under Siege NOT the final Police Academy – though it may as well have been.


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. 7 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)

Police Academy, No. 7 - Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)

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)

Police Academy, No. 5 - Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988)

Every film franchise can learn from its mistakes, even Police Academy. Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol left no place for the series to go, except endless, mindless repetition. That model was not sustainable, as it necessitates the consistent expansion of an already over-wieldy cast. The fates intervened, reduced that cast, and what may at first have seemed a tragedy was in fact a blessing in disguise.

Steve Guttenberg left the series that’d been so good to him, and vice versa. His Hollywood star was rising (sarcasm), and scheduling conflicts forced the bland Guttenberg to opt for Three Men and a Baby over Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. Can you even imagine the ragged, post-apocalyptic world where Steve Guttenberg doesn’t appear in Police Academy movies?! Well, look around, you’re living in it!

The thing is, Guttenberg was actually an albatross for these movies, I’d say, with his lame wannabe Bill Murray schtick. Good riddance! And forced to confront a reduced cast for the first time, the series goes all out in the firings and pares things down solely to the other core cast members (Fackler excluded already). Summing up by name and one- or two-word trait, which is all which defines these characters, here is what makes up a Guttenbergless Police Academy:

Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow): Makes noises
Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf): Militaristic
Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith): Strong
Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey): Meek
Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook): Sexy

To these five, add a lone new(ish) addition, the sole worthwhile newbie from Citizens on Patrol:

Thomas “House” Conklin (Tab Thacker): Fat


These aren’t movie characters! These are the minimum amount of traits you need to qualify as a “person” in anything other than a slasher movie. You’d think, five movies in, they’d have a bit more definition than that. And you can see why the other Police Academies were stagnating. Imagine a writer’s task: Given a firing range setting, make jokes for each of the six traits above. Then do likewise for the gym, then the bar, then the locker room, etc. Then, when the sequel rolls around, make new jokes for the same traits at the same locations. Hence why Citizens on Patrol resorted to adding about fifteen other trait-bearing ciphers.

Assignment Miami Beach discovers, late in the series game, a solution many other franchises happen upon with far greater efficiency; Location switches make up for other surfeits. Hence it works to keep this small, shallow pool, and put ‘em someplace new. And with the beach, the ocean, the airplane, it’s amazing how freed up the jokes are, relatively speaking!

Actually, forcing an entry to occur elsewhere (i.e. Miami) necessitates many more changes for the better. For one, this Police Academy has more of a plot than merely “cadets are trained,” which I am sick to death of. Rather, Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes, series regular) is set to receive the Police Officer of the Decade award at the Miami Police Convention. And with Guttenberg off not furthering his career elsewhere, and none of the other regulars capable of even the slightest interest, it falls to Lassard to be the movie’s heart. As the elder superior of the rest of the goon squad, this makes perfect sense, and somehow gives Assignment Miami Beach a little more direction than usual.

(And I don’t mean Alan Myerson’s direction, for we have another identity-free helmer here. For one thing, Myerson has no variation to his compositions, as these first two screen pics are separated by over fifteen minutes of movie.)


Still, the show is going on the road. Because it is a series standard for a “bad” cop to strangely oppose Lassard for no good reason, Harris and Proctor are back (G. W. Bailey and Lance Kinsey, agaiiiin). As Lassard is due for a mandatory retirement (providing an actual attempt at emotional heartbreak), Harris guns for his old commandant position. With this not forthcoming, he decides – for reasons which are no doubt clear to him at least – to go to Miami and impress everyone. Okay, whatever. It’s just an excuse to see Harris and Proctor humiliate themselves, due to no outside influence, time and again. As an effort to outfit this series with its own variation on The Pink Panther’s Inspector Dreyfus, Harris (or Mauser) ain’t up to scratch.

In fact, The Pink Panther suggests a line of discussion I’d intended to put off. That is namely, though these Police Academies are not particularly good comedies, that isn’t to say the germ is a poor one. Peter Sellers’ Pink Panthers show how a similar immature sense of humor, told with care and thought and craft, can be remarkably effective – and in the same basic cop milieu. Roughly parallel to Police Academy, The Naked Gun movies were perpetuating the “dumb cop endures interminable pratfalls” form, with dry seriousness replacing flailing desperation. Further down the road, Broken Lizard’s Super Troopers more specifically shows even the “goofy group of cops” subgenre Police Academy arguably pioneered could be done better, when created by a group with a cohesive comic sensibility. Then Edgar Wright’s marvelous Hot Fuzz showed a cop comedy could even reach the upper echelons of popular moviemaking overall, though it opts to borrow the language of cop action movies more often than cop comedies.

But with the Miami setting, Assignment Miami Beach perhaps most resembles Reno 911!: Miami, the feature film of Comedy Central’s “Reno 911!” Actually, it too centers around out-of-towner cops subbing for the locals when criminals sabotage a local police convention – This is so similar to Assignment Miami Beach, one almost wonders why a 2007 movie felt the need to use Police Academy 5 as its major inspiration. Though it’s a useful entity, as comic approach is everything; the “Reno 911!” cast is similar to Broken Lizard in their unity as a comedic mind, something I never once sensed from the Police Academy brigade.


I anticipate the plot by mentioning criminals at the police convention. That assumes a larger plot which is…sorta in place. Upon reaching Miami (after a surprisingly non-painful bunch of airport-based slapstick antics, mostly centered upon Lassard’s love of golf), Lassard’s bag is switched with that of middling jewel thieves Tony and Mouse (Rene Auberjonois and Archie Hahn). No one realizes this yet, because contrivance and universal stupidity is the guiding principal of the Police Academy universe. But when Tony and Mouse discover their diamonds have been replaced with a goldfish in a tank (the logistics of Lassard’s goldfish in the carryon seriously stretch credibility, even here), they begin an effort to retrieve the bag in Lassard’s possession.

The crooks’ bungle around the corners of the frame, like an incompetent variation on Michael Myers, lending Assignment Miami Beach its most consistent thought for the entire middle section. Otherwise, the promise of old characters in a new setting is enough, as our heroes proceed to do whatever gags they can in a beach setting. This is already after their plane flight has taken a quarter of an hour. Actually, if I were in a generous mood, I’d suggest there is some silent comedy sensibility to this arrangement, as the crew’s travels simply justify individual gag routines, and nothing more. It seems they’ve finally found their grounding in late-series juvenile comedy, as the former three sequels struggled with their voice in a post-vulgar world (the first Police Academy was too much of a wannabe Animal House to be thoroughly childish).


Aiding the cast in their idleness, ever so coincidentally Lassard happens to have a nephew in Miami Beach, whom he’s never mentioned before. Meet Sergeant Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy), the ostensible “straight man” replacement for an MIA Steve Guttenberg. In most series, such a lead replacement would seem desperate and somewhat offensive (such as in Curse of the Pink Panther), but instead Nick demonstrates how inessential Guttenberg’s Mahoney was. Without a dedicated presence, he is simply bland, and rather isolated from the core group of yuck-meisters.

Joining Nick is Officer Kate (Janet Jones), who would be, in a differently-concerned Police Academy, the boring, go-nowhere love interest for Nick. I guess she sorta is in this one, except both are so anonymous, they mostly recede into the wallpaper. Though Kate does provide an amble amount of PG-rated T&A (which the rest of the Miami populace also obliges in, one reason this is the series’ best sequel to date). Of course, with Debbie Callahan around, this slot is already filled, and more curvaceously I might add. Oh well, can’t fault ‘em for trying!


Oh well. Would that an entire listless, sloppy comedy could be filled out with beach and bikini scenes – with the raunchiest joke being Harris getting the word “Dork” tanned onto his chest – but there’s that police convention to get to, and the plot hidden deep within its darkest recesses. This convention is an excuse to bring up the usual, tired Police Academy situations, like the firing range, the gym, the locker room, etc. Get ready for the fifth joke about Tackleberry’s enthusiasm for rifles and targets. No, there’s no variation. Why do you ask? Actually, this whole section is a prime example of what my problem was with Police Academy 4. Having it reoccur here (though with reduced screen time) just highlights how much better off the rest of this mess is.


Anyway, over one day after reaching Miami, Lassard finally decided to see how his beloved goldfish is doing – having left the creature inside his carryon luggage in the hotel the entire time – or at least that’s what Lassard assumes, as rather the fish is in the possession of a local Miami crime lord, and I actually forget what eventually happens to it. (As live action cartoons, this same fish has already died a number of times in the other sequels, to no effect.) But I’m getting distracted.

Start again! Lassard checks the bag, finds a camcorder (which amuses him with its homemade sex tapes within [!]), later finds diamonds within said camcorder. This is at the police convention, where Tony, Mouse, and several other semi-Scarface mooks loiter. Armed with a single pistol (in the center of the nation’s police conference, I might add), Tony manages to take Lassard hostage, and flee. This was deemed “simpler” than just nabbing the camcorder, because there can be “no witnesses.” Um…look, the story demands Lassard gets kidnapped at this stage, so just go with it. It’s not like the rest has been airtight anyway.


The joke here (and they do at least fashion a farcical, consistent joke) is that Lassard thinks this is all a practical joke, having learned the Miami Police Convention is wont to stage such “felonies” as a lark. So he is astoundingly genial in Tony’s care. It’s remarkable, you know, to see a single comic conceit in a Police Academy last for over a minute, let alone an entire climax, but that’s just what happens here! They rather over-rely upon this gag, however.

No matter, Lassard’s officers from…whatever town they hail from (at least now we know it’s in Williams County, which…doesn’t narrow it down)…okay, those non-Miami police, they lead the rescue effort. This reasonably resembles the climaxes from other Police Academies, and even involves a boat chase as in Back in Training, so there isn’t much to say. This is the one moment where Assignment Miami Beach pales in comparison with its recent predecessors, as the fan boat finale is insufficiently ridiculous after jet skis and hot air balloons.


But even so, this is the better film (or I’m getting franchise-based Stockholm Syndrome again), owing almost wholly to two things: location change, and cast reduction. Any other positive attributes totally spring up from those factors, which were possibly even unintentional. I mean, Assignment Miami Beach takes every opportunity it is given to make the same asinine errors endemic to its series, so I’m sure were it possible it would’ve screwed things up further. Don’t get me wrong, Police Academy 5 is still a stupid, dumb, imbecilic, moronic, low IQ, foolish movie, but it’s not quite as developmentally stunted as some of its fellows.


Nineteen-eighty-eight was a big year for Police Academy, as it saw the franchise expand its beat beyond films, into the realm of the Saturday morning cartoon spinoff. Owing to how ridiculously cartoony thee movies has always been, it’s a natural thing to make “Police Academy.” Beyond providing twelve caricatures of Police Academy superstars, the genuine cartoon takes advantage of its medium to add bizarre new concepts – because that’s surely what was missing from these things. Hence there is a regular roster of ridiculous criminal villains, with names like Kingpin, Numbskull, Mr. Sleaze, Phoenix Amazona, Lockjaw, The Phantom, Seedy McLeech, Mr. Crameneil, Kranz, Dr. Kamaleon, Mr. Bimmelman, Flung Hi, Mr. Glitch and Cratchit, King Neptune, Waxen Wayne, Dr. Mackle, Falcon, Big Mary, Fox, Mr. Watkips and Watso, Skull Ned, The Incredible Shandar, Bad Knight, the Mexican Gang, the Twin Hunmongo, Mr. Shee, Pack, Squitty and Fufy the crocodile. Need I go on? This greatly amuses me!

Also, our heroes get “wacky” crime-fighting gadgets, embracing the silliness and becoming something of an off-brand “Inspector Gadget.”

Also also, there’s the K-9 Corps, a troupe of talking dogs, because there aren’t enough characters to keep track of already. Let’s see, here we have Samson, Lobo, Bonehead, Chilipepper and Schitzy. It seems they’re all ethnic stereotypes, like in Oliver & Co., making up for a deficiency in the live action movies. Also, this makes the show a font of tired kid-vid clichés – it really is a part of the classic Police Academy ethos.

Wow, we’ve gone from podium blowjobs to this, a kiddie cartoon from the era of pandering, bottom-of-the-barrel kiddie cartoons. What a fascinating five years it’s been, and what a testament to how the series has changed. And it’s with this reputation, as an engenderer of idiocy in multiple mediums, that the Police Academy movies continue on, for nothing can stop them except unprofitability, and we’re not there yet.


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. 6 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989)
• No. 7 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)

Police Academy, No. 3 - Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)

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Police Academy, No. 4 - Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)

Franchises, looked at as a whole, are an interesting field when it comes to auteur theory. Within a single film, it is often easy enough to credit, say, the director with authorial intent. With countless semi-connected films, as directors come and go, and cast with them, certain lucky franchises see instead their producers become the authors. The James Bond series is a prime example of this. For Police Academy, the undoubted voice, the lone creative figurehead who remains consistent throughout, is producer Paul Maslansky. Indeed, Maslansky had discovered his golden goose in these turkeys, and was intent to milk the bird dry for all its eggs (or whatever), a new sequel released every single year to diminishing returns. Hell, I really doubt anyone else was clamoring for more, other than Steve Guttenberg’s long-suffering agent.

Nonetheless, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol actually curtails the series’ steady downward qualitative slide. It makes no greater mistakes than Police Academy 3: Back in Training; hell, it might even be better than that one. Though otherwise it’s the exact same movie. And Police Academy 3 was the exact same movie as Police Academy, with Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment being the lone outlying example of an entry which doesn’t take place at the titular Police Academy.

Ways in which Police Academy 4 outshines Police Academy 3…It is not as wholly random, as it has the patience to fashion scenes in excess of 30 seconds. Hell, all the gym jokes, for instance, occur in a single block of screen time, rather than getting edited arbitrarily throughout the entire 90 minutes. This helps to make 4 seem, ever so slightly, like an actual movie, with actual characters and an actual story to tell.


It isn’t. The specific sin Police Academy 4 makes (apart from just being a Police Academy movie) is the sin of sequel stagnation. The jokes, characters and premise are slightly rejiggered from before, but only ever so slightly. For example, the joke where an unsuspecting villain is misdirected to the gay Blue Oyster Bar (which occurs in Parts One – Four) happens again here. It exists in no greater context. For well over a minute, the exact same progression of events – officer enters bar, traps self in, realizes where he is, is forced to dance with a leather bear – plays out, relying that we recall it from before, and that we somehow find it amusing again.

The entirety of Citizens on Patrol suffers from this unwillingness to even tinker. This includes the premise, which sees academy commandant Lassard (George Gaynes yet again, now without any of the dignity he once started with) creating a knockoff Neighborhood Watch program: “Citizens on Patrol,” aka C.O.P., which is actually the cleverest notion in the entry. Basically, he intends to train citizens in police ways. So the gist is, AGAIN Officers Mahoney et al (Steve Guttenberg, et al) train a new batch of recruits, same as 3, same as they were trained in 1.

Again this effort is opposed by a stick-in-the-ass evil cop, who tries (and fails) to stop Lassard’s dreams. Substituting for Mauser, who fulfilled this role in 2 and 3, is Thaddeus Harris (G. W. Bailey), who played the part in 1. Why the change? Surely they don’t intend a shakeup. Instead, Mauser’s Art Metrano fell off a ladder and severely injured himself in between entries – this was a major enough event in Metrano’s life that to this day he campaigns against combining ladders and Jews. Or much like the death of director Jerry Paris, perhaps this was just Metrano’s attempt to wrest himself away from the sinking Police Academy franchise. Either is likely.

The result, for viewers, is simply that things are a little different, technically, but to no greater end. In fact, the only real change offered by Citizens on Patrol is a little careful fine-tuning of the cast. So not only do over a dozen familiar faces return from before, but they are repositioned ever so minorly, like a chess grand master performing his lifetime’s greatest game. It’s as though Maslansky is attempting to create the perfect idiot comedy cast, and he’ll keep making these things until it’s done.

With this cast reworking, cadets from last time are instructors this time, because wedging “cherished” characters back into the same predicament takes precedence over any sensible, real world plotting. As before, new characters appear as the trainees, the would-be members of C.O.P. But with each new entry, the cast roster grows immeasurably vast, meaning that these newbies get perhaps a few minutes total per person to make an impression – and that’s for the movie as a whole! It’s so unmanageable now, it’s simply a struggle for new director Jim Drake to keep everything straight.

(Drake is as much like his predecessor, Paris, as the rest of Citizens on Patrol is. He too is a charisma-free television journeyman, who knows the precise underwhelming approach to the material. He differs from Paris only in that he is not actively dying, which is probably the one reason why Citizens on Patrol is better than Back in Training…though that stagnation does its share to make that improvement infinitesimal at best.)


Anyway, let’s do as always, and recollect the characters, and what they bring to the table (if anything):

POLICE OFFICERS

Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg): Guttenberg persists in parading out his bad Bill Murray impression. His character also persists, time and again, in causing pranks through A) the use of glue, and B) replacing personal hygiene products with deadly substances. This is meant to be “cheeky,” and “all in good fun,” but Mahoney’s antics literally put people in the emergency room, which makes it seem less “jocular” and more “police officer committing serial assault crimes.” There’s nothing new here, so it’s only with time that Mahoney starts to seem like a true psychopath.

Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow): Winslow I’ve long called the lone MVP of the series, whose isolated noise-making routines were funny in spite of everything else. Sadly (and this is 4’s greatest damnation), Winslow ceases to be funny here. Why?! I mean, he’s not doing things any worse than before! That’s exactly it. Winslow’s Bruce Lee pastiche, complete with bad dubbing lips and all, was clever and well-acted before. I’ve seen it thrice already; chalk up another two or so performances in 4, and it’s a case of “enough is enough.” Shame too, really, as now the Police Academies have only “observed car crash” value.


Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith): I don’t even recall them doing anything with him this time.

Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf): Militaristic guy. No more jokes for him exist, especially since the writers keep on gifting his personality tics to new characters.

Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey): For the first time in four movies, they fashion an actual, legitimate joke about her one trait: a meek voice. It isn’t a good joke. I don’t know why she’s been kept around this whole time.

Douglas Fackler is at last gone, because he never served any purpose. See, minor rejiggering? Volumes more are said with this omission than with any of the countless clonk-to-the-head jokes which pepper the film.

Replacing Fackler is Officer Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky), who has gone, in two movies, from a preyed-upon store clerk to a dominant police officer. Kinda… Traits-wise, he is no different than ever – a panicky wimp caricature – but at least Sweetchuck is what Fackler always ought to have been. (And as an actual “SNL” alum, Kazurinsky has no right being in Police Academies.)

Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait): Oh GOD! NO!!! He’s still around?! They really lean on Goldthwait’s ability to be, er, distinct, trusting that will somehow effectively replace “funny.” Zed seriously needs medication, and a lengthy asylum stay, but not in this world! Gah!


Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook): Attractive…a female…no, there’s not much else going on here. Though she is still the entirety of this series’ sex appeal, as the screen cap can attest.

Lassard, we’ve met.

Harris, we’ve also met. Of note, he holds an astounding grudge against Sergeant Mahoney, owing to their rivalry in Part One. You’d think, owing to a non-Police Academy world with the potential for character arcs, Harris would be proud that Mahoney rehabilitated and became a police officer. …Nah, these movies are for nimrods!

Kathleen Kirkland (Colleen Camp): Still a cop. Is…physically present.

Bud Kirkland (Andrew Paris): Also a cop. Likes to punch his father’s face.

Mr. Kirkland (Arthur Batanides): Likes to punch his son’s face. Not a cop.

Proctor (Lance Kinsey): Harris’ right-hand-man, having transferred ownership over from Mauser. As a designated villain, Proctor is the butt of many an intrusive Mahoney prank (which includes getting his privates exposed to leering thousands of sports fans, in a move too premeditated and cruel to be cute). We’re meant to find his suffering amusing because he’s a bad guy. In fact, Proctor (though originally a non-goof-off cop) is more foolish than the alleged “fools” who make up the cast above. Progressively, the baddies have become more inept, and the goodies less so, until it seems these movies have totally forgotten what their concept was to begin with.


Also, “Elvis” Nogata (Brian Tochi) shows up late in the game, because they possibly just remembered him. He appears beneath Callahan’s pelvis, which is a perfectly good justification for why Tochi continues to associate with this franchise.

There is also a returning commissioner character (George R. Robertson), another grey-hair who embraces general klutziness with all the rest.


Now, these people are the returning cast mates. Counting, that’s…sixteen characters in total, sixteen characters to juggle over 90 minutes (okay, 88, and that’s with credits). Leaving, mathematically, five and a half minutes per actor. And it’s perfectly likely Blankes and Copeland show up somewhere in here too. And this is just what Citizens on Patrol has inherited from its predecessors. It must pave “new” ground as well, and add more buffoonish, broad characters to the mix. These are the C.O.P.s.

CITIZENS ON PATROL (TO BE)

Tommy “House” Conklin (Tab Thacker): In-film, he is the morbidly obese black person, like Fat Albert or the dreaded Anthony Anderson. In reality, Thacker was a champion wrestler, whose size was a physical advantage. Not that Police Academy 4 treats him as anything other than a visual punch line.

Mrs. Feldman (Billie Bird): An elderly lady who inherits many of Tackleberry’s usual gags. “An old woman acts unlike an old woman.” This is basically the recent Betty White career resurge, only with that trademark Police Academy idiocy.

Laura (Corrine Bohrer): A love interest…for Zed?! No, no, NOOO!...Look, I like having Corrine Bohher (aka Veronica Mars’ mom) around; she’s cute, in an ‘80s way. I hate how it necessitates screen time for Bobcat Goldthwait and – Okay, it’s my problem, I’ll deal with it.


Meet also Arnie and Kyle (Brian Backer and – holy schnikeys, is that David Spade?!), two skateboarding “punks” who represent a sickening attempt for the movie to connect with modern youth culture. As most occurrences of skateboarding in mainstream films are. (Of note, these clowns’ stunt doubles include Tony Hawk – skeletons in closets!) In their introduction, it seems Arnie and Kyle shall enjoy the Mahoney plot line from Part One – police academy as probation for their misdemeanors – except…except after a full 10 minutes or so dedicated to setting them up, they are totally forgotten about, filling out the crowds and doing not much else.

Speaking of filling space…I suppose there’s a trainee named Butterworth (Derek McGrath), but he seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

There’s one more category to satisfy, as even now the cast is not complete. At least this is a small category.

THE LOVE INTEREST

Claire Mattson (Sharon Stone): A blonde, a part of the abortive attempt to make Steve Guttenberg seem charming. All of Claire’s personality owes to the fact this is Sharon Stone before Basic Instinct and Casino, so no points to you for that, Police Academy 4.

That makes (and now I’m in the realm of pure estimates) 24 characters to cycle between. Back to the calculator! With 88 minutes, that’s three and a half per! We’d be better off watching these people’s audition videos for a reality show.


Boy, I wish I could someday do a plot dissection of a Police Academy, but that’d be like trying to compare Taco Bell to Rick Bayless. The only time these things ever attempt “plot” is at the beginning and end, moments which must frame the randomness in the middle. The beginning, we’ve looked at (C.O.P.); the ending is coming up!

A jailbreak happens (due to Proctor’s stupidity – he’s meant as a competent cop?!). Yes, these climaxes are always premeditated upon randomness, and they even play out in such a manner – cops making random arrests, for whatever gags they hadn’t fashioned yet.

But oh no, some crooks are escaping in a hot air balloon! Whuh?! Okay, brain, I’m shutting you off, for let’s not question the tactics of cops chasing hot air balloons in Wright Brothers era biplanes. Really, this is a conscious attempt to recreate the reality-bursting zaniness of Back in Training’s jet ski finale. It’s not quite as good, because an air show isn’t as foolishly ‘80s as a yacht regatta. Still, a second unit action movie crew evidently produced this sequence, as they did prior, and as such it is the most purely enjoyable moment of Citizens on Patrol.

Well, the second most enjoyable moment. The first is the one that comes next, as the words “The End” appear up on the screen.

With a slight uptick in quality, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol doesn’t suggest much for the overall franchise devolution. So to hell with ending on a deep thought; it doesn’t behoove this franchise anyway! Farewell.


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. 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)