The Police Academy series (with a word about the "Revenge of the Nerds")

[Andrew NDB]

So I rewatched all of the 4 "Revenge of the Nerds" movies, and I realized I never actually ever watched 3 or 4. Weird! Definitely 1 and 2 weren't what I remembered. 1 was pretty funny, and 2 was still a competent and "big" movie... but the laughs were tuned down a bit. 3 was just plain... eh... a little too made-for-TV-esque bad (which makes sense, since it was made for TV and premiered on Fox I guess). A couple of chuckles and a nice arc for the main frat guy who was the neighbor guy on Married with Children, but pretty barren beyond that. 4 was surprisingly OK and actually served as a pretty decent conclusion to the first movie's story. Not bad! But the production values took a huge dip after 2, which I've seen hundreds of times. It was always on cable.

Anyway, this inspired me to take another look at the Police Academy movies. Man oh man, as a kid, I swear... I realize now, it was parts 2-5 that were ALWAYS on cable. I must have seen 2-5 a zillion times. I'm pretty sure I at least rented part 1 at the video store but it seemed less ingrained in my brain. But man! Funny stuff. Also, while I know I must have at least rented 6 ("City Under Siege") I don't remember it at all. And I know for a fact I never saw the "Mission to Moscow."

I'm up to 4 now, but let's see...

Part 1... pretty hilarious! Irreverent. The antithesis of PC. And R-rated (I had no idea the other ones were forced to drop down!). So many great characters, and many of them don't appear in any future Police Academy movies. Definitely the best by far. You'll never see a movie again where the "bad guys" are tricked into going to a gay bar... where they almost immediately get raped. I admit, there is a spot where Hightower gets called a "jiggaboo" by another cop that is pretty cringey, not funny. But what he does in response is great. I wish he'd done more, actually.

Part 2. Still OK! And while 1 was R, this was PG-13. Surprisingly... they were still able to show a lot of boobs and had a lot of F words? *shrug* Still, this would mark the end of the series having any true teeth. Decent. You can see the camp kind of begin to take over the more "real comedy" of the first movie. This would only get worse from here on. Sight gags begin to just be sight gags not based in logic or even physics, something the first movie kept solid.

Part 3. Straight up PG. But still a lot of fun. The "new blood" from 2 comes to roost a bit more, including Bobcat's straight up gang leader from it. Now he's a cop. A little bit all over the map and a lot of "let's make people remember this scene from part 1" here and there, but not terrible. The camp devoid of logic is now taking hold in a lot of scenes.

Part 4. Eh... a little harder to defend this one. Still has the "moments," but now these are mostly confined to things that are recreated from previous movies (and mostly the first one). And while getting top billing, it seems clear Guttenberg was mostly a peripheral character this time out, complete with a martini cheersing sendoff to his character with Sharon Stone (who doesn't even show up much in the movie and doesn't so much as kiss Guttenberg even when the scene calls for it) in a hot air balloon at the end. His character never appears again after this movie. They mostly give Bobcat the "lead" parts (which, if I'm listening to this fairly recent interview with him correctly is because even though the director hated his performance, it was "testing well" and they kept giving him bonus scenes as if he was some kind of Hiddleston Loki long before that was a thing) but it doesn't really work because they don't really commit to it... and also largely because they don't really assign this role to anyone else either (not even Guttenberg).

It is pretty funny that in all 4 movies, at least someone ends up in the "Blue Oyster" gay bar getting raped by the gang of leather-clad patrons there. Obviously it couldn't happen now and wasn't even realistic then, but as an 80s comedy thing (and they were doing 1 movie a year all the way through -- as of part 4 we're not even at the 90s yet)... it's pretty hysterical.

Gonna rewatch 5 and 6, then tackle 7. I don't think it's going to take a turn for the better, but I'll be happy if there's at least moments. So far so good. A lot of misses after the first one with only a few hits, but I still found myself laughing a lot more than in most modern comedies.