Police Academy (dir. Hugh Wilson, 1984)
Directed by Hugh Wilson, and written by Proft and Israel, and produced by Maslansky.
The unseen mayor (a woman, gasp) has indeed lifted all previous physical requirements to police academy admission. “Naturally,” a pre-title crawl tells us, “the police freaked.” All manner of wackos who always wanted to be police officers begin applying, and we see an amusing sequence of each character preparing to go off to the police academy for the first time.
We see the clumsy nerd, Fackler (Bruce Mahler), driving to the academy with his nagging wife (Debralee Scott) on the hood of his car. We see the funny fat guy (Donovan Scott) arriving in a cloud of wheezes. We see the boilerplate tough guy, Moses Hightower (football player Bubba Smith) retiring from his florist job. We see the perhaps-mentally unstable gun nut Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf). We see the timid, small woman, Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsay) learning to assert herself. We see the womanizing Latin lover George Martin (Andrew Rubin). We meet two yuppie jagoffs who are destined to become bullies (played by Brant Von Hoffman and Scott Thompson, but not the Scott Thompson from “The Kids in the Hall”). And we see the spoiled rich girl (Kim Cattrall), defying her blueblood heritage. Many of these people we’ll see in future sequels.
The hero of our story is Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), a troublemaking twentysomething who is an irascible flirt and always in trouble with the law. When he intentionally wrecks a car at his parking attendant job, he is arrested and given a choice: prison or the police academy. Mahoney feels he can go to the police academy, intentionally get kicked out, and be free again. While at the police station, he meets Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), a vocal percussionist and mimic, who is in trouble for imitating machine guns and basically disturbing the peace. The go to the police academy together.
At the academy we meet the local chief of police Hurnst (George R. Robertson) who feels the latest batch of recruits is a no-good pile of horrors, and basically orders the commandant of the academy Mr. Lassard (George Gaynes) to force them all to quit. Lassard is a befuddled and kind old man, and doesn’t have much of a stomach for anything beyond his pet goldfish, so it falls to Capt. Harris (G.W. Bailey) to carry out Hurnst’s request. Luckily, Harris is a bullying drill-instructor type, and has no problem bullying and pushing people around until they quit. We also meet Sgt. Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), a tough as nails PE instructor type with fists of iron and truck-crushing breasts.
Now that we have our players and setting in place, we can commence with the jokes. And, really, that’s all that happens in the movie. Mahoney tries to get kicked out by sending the fat guy into the commandant’s wife’s bathroom. He puts shoe-polish on Harris’ megaphone. He hides a hooker in a podium, and has her fellate Lassard unexpectedly while he gives a speech. He also throws parties (complete with booze, campfires, and some of the most gratuitous nudity of any ‘80s sex comedy), and tries really hard to pick up Kim Cattrall, at which he ultimately succeeds. George Martin sneaks off to the women’s dorm for nightly threesomes.
Harris belittles them all and calls them “dirtbags.” Harris does indeed recruit Hoffman and Thompson, newly shaved, to be his tattletales, so the prankstering extends to them as well; at one point they are lured into a gay leather bar called The Blue Oyster (which looks like a friendlier version of the clubs in Cruising), where they dance all night. I suppose it serves them right, as one of them un-ironically uses the word “jigaboo” at one point. Really? “Jigaboo” in 1984? It’ll make you wince even more than the gay panic of The Blue Oyster.
Callahan beats up men in martial arts training, and the other men all volunteer to be next. Hooks is timid and squeaks a lot. There is a funny sequence where Hightower admits that he never learned to drive, and Mahoney takes him for a late-night lesson in a tiny car with the front seats missing. Tackleberry is only too pleased to use excessive force, and brings his own guns to training. Late in the film, he is seen shooting a cat down out of a tree. Don’t worry. I think the cat was fine. I think.
The third act shows Fackler accidentally starting a riot, and all the recruits are called into action in riot gear. There is a miscommunication, however, and the recruits are sent to the center or the riot rather than the perimeter. In the ensuing chaos, Harris is kidnapped by a bad guy, and Mahoney and Jones manage to rescue him. This heroic act, somehow, absolves all the previous conflicts in the film, and everyone graduates with flying colors. Huzzah.
Since I can’t really fault this film on its story (or lack thereof), I’ll look instead at the characters, starting with our hero. Steve Guttenberg has gotten a bum rap over the years because of his involvement in these Police Academy movies, but, watching it again, I can see that he’s a charming and funny comedian. When he pulls out the playful smirk, and the flirty looks, I can buy him as a funloving sprite. I do, however, have trouble seeing him as a troublemaker who is always on the wrong side of the law. Guttenberg has no edge, no toughness, no hint of violence. If our entryway to this multi-film series is the belief in Mahoney’s anarchic spirit, it’s a pretty flimsy entryway. Luckily, his charm makes up for a lot, and the scenes he has where he’s quietly talking to Smith and Rubin come across as genuinely sweet. Winslow has a limited shtick, using his jejune vocal sound effects and ventriloquism to embarrass and amuse people, but many of the jokes are kinda funny.
It’s an inoffensive, predictable, R-rated comic mess, this first film, and perhaps exemplifies a certain kind of 1980s comedy that is often referred to in the abstract. A sequel was inevitable.
