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| Police Academy (1984) |
Now, don't get me wrong. When I say 'stupid', I don't mean that it's bad. Far from it. A movie is allowed to have ridiculous things happen and physics-breaking moments as long as it commits to it's own internal logic. When one of the first things that happens in your movie is a man drives a car with two wheels off the ground for an extended period of time, you should know what kind of movie you're in for and, at that point, it's really just a matter of personal preference if you like what that movie is or not. If you don't like it, I'm not going to hold it against you; it's just not your kind of film. Me? I was laughing. The movie had some really great comedic moments for me, and it was fairly consistent. Not every joke was laugh out loud, some maybe even fell flat, but the majority of them were solid. Mahoney's dry wit is pretty consistent, and some of the more outlandish moments land reasonably well. Then you have the jokes that rely too much on gross-out humour and shock value, where the punchline is just 'a dog humps his leg' or 'his head enters a horse's ass'. There are other gross-out jokes like that in here, but the reason these two in particular fail is because that's the extent of the joke.
| Steve Guttenberg as Mahoney |
To that effect, I feel as though the script could have used one or two more rewrites. I don't know, it just feels a little messy to me. The movie jumps around a lot, and so it should; it has an awful lot of side characters with varied jokes to make around them, after all. The problem is, the movie loses a lot of focus as a result. There is barely any time devoted to Mahoney's 'I'm going to get myself kicked out' plot before he abandons it entirely, and that was the stuff I wanted to see more of. The bigger problem is that there are a lot of really short scenes that lead to a character-specific punchline and then the scene ends. The issue is, if that punchline doesn't land, the scene was pointless, especially since a majority of them really don't do anything to serve the overall story. There is also little-to-no time put into the relationship between Mahoney and Thompson before the movie decides they're in a relationship. Hell, I'd even say there was little-to-no time put into Thompson's character at all, which is a shame considering how well Kim Cattrall does in the role. Here's how I'd structure the movie: throughout the first and second acts you have Mahoney goofing around, trying to get himself booted whilst getting to know the other recruits (and you can tell their stories at the same time) and spending the most time with Thompson so we can see them actually getting to know each other. Through their bond, Mahoney decides he wants to stay (just like he does in the movie, but later in the story) only to finally get kicked out. The third act can pretty much stay as it is, I just think the first two acts could have used a tidy-up. The problem with making such a gag-heavy movie like this is that you still need to build a decent narrative around it, and if the narrative is weak, some of the gags lose something as a result.
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| Kim Cattrall as Thompson |
I also feel like the movie's villain was just a little weak. Not in the sense that he's not a threat to the main character (even though he kind of isn't), or that his motivations are unclear, but mainly because there seemed to be a better pick for the villain role that the movie sets up only to do nothing with. The police chief in the first act, the one who's there for one scene then never appears again, the one that casually spouts some pretty racist, sexist comments like it's nothing; why wasn't he the main villain? You could easily have had him drop in semi-frequently to check in on the progress, and he could have been the bigger presence to really test Mahoney. Instead, we get the little weaselly Lieutenant with loftier dreams in mind, who can never really be a match for Mahoney. He does his job well enough, and G. W. Bailey is great in the role, but there really needed to be that bigger force driving that aspect of the narrative forward. Also, the movie gets a little confused with it's villain's motivations by the end. They make a point at the beginning of saying they want the cadets to quit on their own accord, rather than simply kicking them out, yet they delight in kicking out two cadets towards the end. This is what I was talking about earlier about a movie sticking to it's own internal logic; in general, nothing is truly a plot-hole until it does that.
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| G. W. Bailey as Harris |
I don't want it to sound like I hated this movie, since, like I said, I didn't. I've been mentioning Mahoney a lot in this review so far and, aside from the fact that he's the main character, that's because Steve Guttenberg carries this movie. He was the perfect cast for the laid-back yet stern Mahoney, and he manages to capture the goofiness of the situations while also bringing it down to earth, which serves to make the entire thing more relatable to the audience. It's part of the reason why I wanted more of a focus on that aspect of the story; I wanted to see Mahoney truly tested, and I wanted to see more out of Steve Guttenberg as a result. The rest of the cast do their jobs really well. It's almost useless to point out individual cases since, in general, each character plays up their one character trait for either laughs or otherwise reasonably well. I do want to give a specific mention to Bubba Smith as Hightower, since he has the most range out of the rest of the cast. I like how they give him a bit more focus with the driving thing before we get some real emotion out of him in the next scene. Smith plays it all without going too over-the-top, and it's the perfect way to play this kind of character. Also, Michael Winslow, the guy that does the sound effects, is brilliant and I loved every scene he was in. They always knew exactly how to use him to full effect, and it was just really impressive to boot.
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| Bubba Smith as Hightower |
So, overall, what did I think of Police Academy (1984)? Well, this review may have seemed pretty half-and-half in terms of positive to negative criticism, but at the end of the day, this movie's main goal was to make me laugh, and I did quite a lot, so I am leaning more towards the positive side of the critical response. It's one of those movies I can put on if I'm just looking for something light-hearted and silly to pass the time. How this spawned 6 sequels, I couldn't tell you, and, trust me, knowing my OCD I'm sure to get around to those eventually. 6.5/10.
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