I'm going to come right out and say it. Police Academy 4 is the best entry in the series. I enjoyed it so much that I actually gave it a 2 out of 5 on Netflix instead of a 1 out of 5 like all the others. I actually laughed a few times at this one and didn't have a bad time, and it wasn't just because I was pretty drunk and full of Wendy's at this point.
Now, I know calling it the best Police Academy movie doesn't exactly sound like a compliment. It's sort of like saying that someone is the most polite rapist you've ever met.
Get it? Citizens On Patrol? The acronym is C.O.P.!Things got off to a fucking great start. Citizens On Patrol turned out to have it's own theme. And not just any theme, but a rap music theme, where they rap about the movie you're about to watch. And not only that, but Jones-himself Michael Winslow is doing the rapping. Holy shit does this get you psyched up to watch a new Police Academy movie. I don't know why they didn't all have awesome theme songs. 
We couldn't help but rock out to that shit.
So we got most of our major players back doing exactly the same bullshit they did in the last three movies. Clumsy Guy is gone and I was still hoping dead. Mauser has mysteriously vanished, with Harris (the asshole with the cane) suddenly taking his place. And with no explanation as to how or why, Harris has inherited Proctor as his asshole underling. Although none of the bad guys were funny in any of these movies, Harris and Proctor are the best, so this can been seen as an unexpected improvement.
The plot of part 4 is exactly the same as parts 1 and 3, only the movie tries to pretend like it isn't. Here, the Police Academy starts a new program called Citizens on Patrol, where ordinary citizens are trained by the cops. Anyone is allowed in, which brings in a cavalcade of looney characters that... wait a minute! This is essentially the same movie they've already made twice. Only they keep pushing this C.O.P. thing like it's a clever new idea.
Bobcat is back again as Zed, and here is where he really comes into his own. Either genuis scribe Gene Quintano finally learned how to write for his character, or they let Bobcat improvise, because his array of nonsequitors in this movie are the best thing in the entire series. We actually laughed about 8 minutes in when he explained that he prefers to wear his "normal, human clothes" when he goes out in public to make people feel at ease.
OK, that doesn't sound funny, but it was. You had to be there. Also I was drunk.
It turns out a young David Spade is in this movie, inexplicably cast as a cool, skateboarding teenager who joins the C.O.P. program. This leads to one of the best parts of the movie. Some asshole cops harass him about his skateboarding. He insists that he wasn't skateboarding. When the cops leave, he turns to one of his skater buddies sand says "This is skateboarding!" and suddenly the movie launches into a 5 minute music montage of the skateboarders skating around town doing tricks. It has nothing to do with the rest of the movie (his skateboarding doesn't even get mentioned again), but it contains the most stylish camera work in the whole film, and one of the skaters turns out to be a young Tony Hawk! Holy shit!
There's some other accidentally entertaining stuff in this movie, as well as some shockingly non-unentertaining elements. Like when a title card announces "Meanwhile, in London..." out of the blue, or when some of the cops chase bad guys onto a pirate ship and ninjas attack them! Where did the pirate ship come from? Why were there ninjas on it? I don't know and I don't fucking care, it rocks.
I think it was somewhere around here that my girlfriend stole my notes and added her comment "girlfriend still dating Dan... it's a Police Academy miracle!" Har har.
The final action scene (which in true series fashion comes out of nowhere in the last 15 minutes) is actually kind of cool. There's a big chase involving biplanes and hot air balloons, and fucking Mahoney actually jumps from one plane onto another, like something out of a James Bond movie. Even better, Tackleberry goes Keanu-Reeves-in-Point-Break and gets so mad that he jumps out of a plane... but one ups Keanu by jumping onto a hot air balloon and scaling down the side. It's a legitimately entertaining sequence.
Speaking of Mahoney, this was Guttenberg's final Police Academy film, and they give him a very special exit. After the big action scene, he abandons his post and flies away in a giant Police Academy hot air balloon with a young Sharon Stone, presumably to live a life of fucking her brains out while no longer being a cop. That's right, it only took 4 movies, but Mahoney is finally the badass, pussyhound rebel that he was supposed to be.
In our wrap-up, besides the obvious plea of no more Sweet Chuck, we just wanted the rest of the films to be like this. More surrealism and nonsequitors. More needless montages. More Zed. And, we thought, Tackleberry and Hightower have been around for 4 movies now and have been given jack shit to do but rehash their one joke each... let's give them their due.
OK, so the movie is still mostly unfunny, and there's yet another Blue Oyster joke that is just a rehash of the first Blue Oyster joke without kicking it up a notch, and there's actually a scene where a fat guy sits on a bench and it breaks and launches the other occupant through the air... but fuck it! We were charged after this one! And drunk! Very drunk!
That's Patrick holding up four fingers.
He's not doing a fish impression.
We couldn't help but rock out to that shit.
So we got most of our major players back doing exactly the same bullshit they did in the last three movies. Clumsy Guy is gone and I was still hoping dead. Mauser has mysteriously vanished, with Harris (the asshole with the cane) suddenly taking his place. And with no explanation as to how or why, Harris has inherited Proctor as his asshole underling. Although none of the bad guys were funny in any of these movies, Harris and Proctor are the best, so this can been seen as an unexpected improvement.
The plot of part 4 is exactly the same as parts 1 and 3, only the movie tries to pretend like it isn't. Here, the Police Academy starts a new program called Citizens on Patrol, where ordinary citizens are trained by the cops. Anyone is allowed in, which brings in a cavalcade of looney characters that... wait a minute! This is essentially the same movie they've already made twice. Only they keep pushing this C.O.P. thing like it's a clever new idea.
Bobcat is back again as Zed, and here is where he really comes into his own. Either genuis scribe Gene Quintano finally learned how to write for his character, or they let Bobcat improvise, because his array of nonsequitors in this movie are the best thing in the entire series. We actually laughed about 8 minutes in when he explained that he prefers to wear his "normal, human clothes" when he goes out in public to make people feel at ease.
OK, that doesn't sound funny, but it was. You had to be there. Also I was drunk.
It turns out a young David Spade is in this movie, inexplicably cast as a cool, skateboarding teenager who joins the C.O.P. program. This leads to one of the best parts of the movie. Some asshole cops harass him about his skateboarding. He insists that he wasn't skateboarding. When the cops leave, he turns to one of his skater buddies sand says "This is skateboarding!" and suddenly the movie launches into a 5 minute music montage of the skateboarders skating around town doing tricks. It has nothing to do with the rest of the movie (his skateboarding doesn't even get mentioned again), but it contains the most stylish camera work in the whole film, and one of the skaters turns out to be a young Tony Hawk! Holy shit!
There's some other accidentally entertaining stuff in this movie, as well as some shockingly non-unentertaining elements. Like when a title card announces "Meanwhile, in London..." out of the blue, or when some of the cops chase bad guys onto a pirate ship and ninjas attack them! Where did the pirate ship come from? Why were there ninjas on it? I don't know and I don't fucking care, it rocks.
I think it was somewhere around here that my girlfriend stole my notes and added her comment "girlfriend still dating Dan... it's a Police Academy miracle!" Har har.
The final action scene (which in true series fashion comes out of nowhere in the last 15 minutes) is actually kind of cool. There's a big chase involving biplanes and hot air balloons, and fucking Mahoney actually jumps from one plane onto another, like something out of a James Bond movie. Even better, Tackleberry goes Keanu-Reeves-in-Point-Break and gets so mad that he jumps out of a plane... but one ups Keanu by jumping onto a hot air balloon and scaling down the side. It's a legitimately entertaining sequence.
Speaking of Mahoney, this was Guttenberg's final Police Academy film, and they give him a very special exit. After the big action scene, he abandons his post and flies away in a giant Police Academy hot air balloon with a young Sharon Stone, presumably to live a life of fucking her brains out while no longer being a cop. That's right, it only took 4 movies, but Mahoney is finally the badass, pussyhound rebel that he was supposed to be.
In our wrap-up, besides the obvious plea of no more Sweet Chuck, we just wanted the rest of the films to be like this. More surrealism and nonsequitors. More needless montages. More Zed. And, we thought, Tackleberry and Hightower have been around for 4 movies now and have been given jack shit to do but rehash their one joke each... let's give them their due.
OK, so the movie is still mostly unfunny, and there's yet another Blue Oyster joke that is just a rehash of the first Blue Oyster joke without kicking it up a notch, and there's actually a scene where a fat guy sits on a bench and it breaks and launches the other occupant through the air... but fuck it! We were charged after this one! And drunk! Very drunk!
That's Patrick holding up four fingers.He's not doing a fish impression.
We could not have had more energy, or have been more excited. That is, until we did our physical challenge...
2 comments:
i hope the physical challenge will get its own post. there are pictures to be shared with the world, after all. even if it's not technically a "movie".
I believe Citizens on Patrol is widely considered the best of the series and the most often referenced. I haven't seen these movies in at least 10 years, probably more. "Most polite rapist" is a good one. Hard to make rape funny, but there you go.
In serious news, I believe Mauser was not back because the actor had a serious accident around this time. I remember seeing a bit on him on Entertainment Tonight. And Tackleberry is no longer with us. When they came out with the DVD set, I looked everyone up and he died. Shit, man. Too soon?
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