Welcome back, dirtbags, to the latest installment of The Series Project here on CraveOnline. After nine straight weeks of Godzilla, it’s time to cool off with a series of comedy films that everyone has seen, and yet no one seems to talk about so much anymore. It is my goal with this particular project to not only sit through all seven of the extant Police Academy films, but to analyze their place in popular culture to the best of my abilities. Time to look back.
There was, I posit, a subgenre-cum-trend in American film comedy, probably starting in the late 1970s, that involved stuffy, upper-class American institutions and settings being undone and/or playfully mocked by an irascible group of playfully disrespectful, irreverent funsters. The origin of this trend was probably Animal House (1978), with its open mockery of higher education in the hands of slobs and drunks who playfully exploited the system for their own (unclear) ends. This was followed by such films as Caddyshack (1981), and Stripes (1983), which mocked high-end golf and the military respectively. This era of filmmaking was also blessed by the slapstick absurdity of films like The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and Airplane! (1980), which infused American screen comedy with a bracing, Marx Bros.-like riff on reality itself, and allowed for a broader range of cartoon weirdness to be re-introduced to the public.
This may seem like a circuitous path leading to Paul Maslansky’s 1984’s seminal comedy classic Police Academy, but I think it is the correct one. In 1984, Pat Proft and Neal Israel wrote a comedy about a group of playful and perhaps untalented recruits signing up for the local police force, and, rather than learning anything about actual law enforcement, used the opportunity to make fun of the police system, and play pranks on their hard-nosed superiors. Each of the characters was some sort of broad archetype. Some of the actors hired were stand-up comedians, making for long asides where they may indulge in their shtick. And, thanks to the cinematic absurdity established in Airplane!, the filmmakers felt no need to set their film in any real specific place or time, instead inventing an imaginary police academy that doesn’t seem to bear any resemblance to the way police officers actual complete their training.
Police Academy was a huge, huge hit, and spawned six sequels and two television series.
Since I am your humble and stalwart film critic and researcher, I have taken it upon myself, on your behalf, to sit through every single one of the Police Academy films made to date to give you an overview of the entire series. I even watched two episodes of the “Police Academy” animated series in preparation (which I’ll be talking about next week). Let’s see how this seven-film series stands up. Here’s the rundown:
At the outset of the first film, it is announced that the mayor The City has begun an open-admission policy to the local police force, attracting all manner of maniacs, imps, and rogues. The city is never named, although most of the films were shot in Toronto. The heads of the academy are either clueless old men, or angered, bigoted bullies who resent that they now have to accommodate women and minorities. The recruits are all laidback prankster types who goad one another into playing pranks on the higher-ups.
Each character has one single characteristic for the audience to focus on. I will introduce them as we go along.
There is no real story or story arc to the series. Each film is a long series of comic vignettes leading to a quick third-act setup-and-payoff in order to have some sort of moment of triumph, and perhaps a little bit of action. It wasn’t until, oddly, Police Academy 6 that real crime and policework came into view.
The humble beginnings…
