The new police recruits. Call them slobs. Call them jerks. Call them gross. Just don’t call them when you’re in trouble.

Sometimes people get things mixed up and think the entire series of Police Academy movies was awful. Most of those films were indeed garbage, but the first one had a few things going for it. Still, who in 1984 could have predicted that this simple little comedy would earn buckets of money and go on to spawn six sequels?

The film begins with the mayor of a major city making it possible for everyone who wants to be a cop to enroll in the police academy. Horrified, the instructors witness one ill-suited candidate after another arrive and it is up to the toughest of them all, Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris (G.W. Bailey), to whip them into shape. Personally, he is hoping to make as many of them as possible leave the school. The police cadets include a social misfit called Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), who has been forced to enlist and is now planning on making so much trouble that the academy will kick him out. There’s also Tackleberry (David Graf), a gun nut, Hightower (Bubba Smith), who is very much a tower of a man, and Jones (Michael Winslow), who has the very useful ability to create all kinds of sounds using his mouth. Then there’s Karen (Kim Cattrall), who becomes the reason why Mahoney eventually decides to avoid getting kicked out. It’s a large cast and not all of the characters are memorable, but Tackleberry, Hightower and Jones were to be fondly remembered by fans of this series.

The funniest people in the film are Lassard (George Gaynes), principal of the academy, and Lieutenant Harris. It is Gaynes who makes the most famous sequence of the movie work so well, the one where he enters a podium and a prostitute (played by real-life porn star Georgina Spelvin), hidden under the podium, accidentally gives him a blowjob. It doesn’t sound all that hilarious, but just watch Gaynes make the most of it. Another sequence shows Harris being catapulted up the ass of a horse. What’s really funny about that is how Bailey plays the next scene, which takes place a while after the unfortunate accident. Harris is inspecting the cadets and thinks maybe no one has heard of what happened (which of course everyone has); he looks very insecure and embarrassed and his hair is very carefully combed, still wet from the probably very long shower. The sequence wouldn’t work without Bailey. Director Hugh Wilson’s film sure is tasteless and no different from all the other typically raunchy comedies of the 1980s (there’s the obligatory beach party with some obligatory nudity). But he paced it pretty well; only during the climactic riot does the movie slow down. It is also surprisingly charming. Even Guttenberg makes his naughty Mahoney quite an engaging fellow.

Perhaps the reason why this series of films has become so massively popular is because every movie shows likeable misfits overcoming adversity; in this world, bullies always get their comeuppance. Let’s not forget that police officers and slapstick kind of belong together and always have throughout the history of cinema. Just ask the Keystone Kops.

Police Academy 1984-U.S. 95 min. Color. Directed by Hugh Wilson. Song: “I’m Gonna Be Somebody” (performed by Jack Mack and the Heart Attack). Cast: Steve Guttenberg (Carey Mahoney), G.W. Bailey (Thaddeus Harris), George Gaynes (Eric Lassard), Kim Cattrall, Bubba Smith, Michael Winslow.

Trivia: Followed by six sequels, starting with Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985), a TV series in 1997 and an animated one in 1988.

Published 2005-09-28 14:32