March 28, 2009: Police Academy
Why, when I tell people I recently watched Police Academy, do I feel like I need to explain myself? The first Police Academy movie, released in 1984, was a decent comedy, with a suitably ridiculous plot device and a bunch of colourful characters who strayed charmingly into the territory of actual caricatures. The descent of the series through six sequels is a whole other story and I can’t imagine that I’ll revisit those films anytime soon, but the original is a bona fide 1980s comedy classic.
The movie is set at a police training academy, following a mayoral decree that all willing applicants must be accepted into the academy. With the removal of the usual restrictions on new recruits based on physical size and capability and mental competence, the doors are flung wide open for the goofiest and most inappropriate police officers possible. Their de facto leader, Mahoney (played by Steve Guttenberg), is a small-time criminal who is sentenced to go to the academy and figures it will be trivial to get kicked out, but the new policy prevents that and leaves him stuck where he is, with the ragtag bunch of tall, short, fat, skinny, smart and stupid recruits.
It’s been many years since I last saw this film. The one thing which really struck me this time about Police Academy was how episodic the structure was, with heavy emphasis on slapstick. The thing is, though, the episodic pacing really seems to suit the movie, since any little comedy bit plays out naturally and they move on to the next thing. The gags generally don’t feel like they are being pushed too far – some of them last a few minutes, others only 30 seconds, and that’s fine.
Iconic performances abound, though mostly not from anyone who became big stars outside the franchise. Steve Guttenberg had a middling 1980s comedy career but in people’s minds he is mostly associated with the Police Academy films (he was in the first four of the seven which were made). Kim Cattrall is probably the biggest eventual star, with a minor role here as a romantic interest, but she went on to middling acting success through the 1980s and 1990s before hitting her big breakout with Sex and the City in the late 1990s. G. W. Bailey as the smarmy and tortured Lieutenant Harris is even more strongly associated with only these films. Bubba Smith as the massively tall Hightower, Michael Winslow as the strange noisemaker Jones, Leslie Easterbrook as the busty Sgt. Callahan, David Graf as the militant Tackleberry, and Marion Ramsay as the stout and feisty Hooks, are all indelible characters first realized in this kickoff film of the franchise, and I hope for their sake that half a dozen films generated enough income for them to coast through the rest of their careers.
The video looked decent on this DVD edition of the film, if somewhat grainy. The overall aesthetic struck me as being a couple of years older than the movie, more like 1982, in clothing and hairstyles. As far as I know, there was no significant delay between shooting and release of the film, so maybe I’m just labouring under the illusion that 1984 was more significantly removed from the early 1980s, stylistically, than it actually was. But comparing with similar films from the same year (Ghostbusters; Gremlins), it seems to me that by 1984 the style really had moved beyond the feathered haircuts and really ugly jeans (not to mention the really ugly cars) more prominent 4-5 years earlier.
Police Academy earns a clear R-rating, with nudity and some swearing, which got me to wondering how old I was when I first saw it. I can’t imagine that it was too long after it was out on video, meaning I was probably around 11 or 12. I’m glad I got in just under the wire to grow up in the home video generation, and not be “restricted” from seeing such “adult” fare until I was 18. It’s worth noting that none of the later Police Academy films were R-rated, presumably because the natural target audience of teenagers was far more lucrative. That trend of PG-13-ifying crude humour snowballed and continues to this day, with so-called “horror” movies regularly getting PG-13 ratings, and with Judd Apatow having only just in the past few years reintroduced the moviegoing masses to the fact that comedies don’t have to be toned down for children.
Police Academy stands respectably in the canon of 1980s movie comedies, and while not perhaps as enduring a classic as Ghostbusters (1984) or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and indeed not as deserving, it does remain quite watchable as a coarse slapstick reminder of movie comedy days gone by.
Solid kickoff to an embarrassing franchise.
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