Police Academy (1984-1994, all seven films)

Police Academy is the comedy franchise that defined the rapid-decline model of sequel filmmaking. Hugh Wilson directed the 1984 original.

The original made approximately one hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide on a four million dollar budget and ranks among the most profitable comedies in 1980s Hollywood. Five sequels followed at the rate of one per year from 1985 through 1989, plus a delayed Mission to Moscow in 1994. Most of the original cast appeared in most of the films. The quality dropped each year.

The audience kept showing up anyway until they stopped, which they did by the seventh entry.

The first Police Academy makes me laugh in ways I can’t fully defend.

It’s dumb, loose and sometimes cringeworthy, and it gets me anyway, mostly because of Winslow and Bubba Smith. The sequels are another story. By the time the franchise lands in Moscow, I’m watching a machine grind out the same gags with less and less energy, and the 6 lets that pleasant first film carry a lot of dismal sequels.

The films collectively grossed approximately five hundred million dollars worldwide. The franchise is the case study other studios studied for years on how to produce sequels cheaply and reliably until the audience exhausted itself. The model worked until it didn’t work, and the films now exist as a complete artifact of 1980s comedy filmmaking economics.

The First Film

The original Police Academy is a competent ensemble comedy. Steve Guttenberg plays Carey Mahoney, a small-time thief sentenced to police academy in lieu of jail. The premise is that a new city policy admits all applicants regardless of qualifications. The academy is filled with the kind of people the previous policy would have rejected. Hijinks ensue. The casting is the foundation. Bubba Smith as Hightower. Michael Winslow as Jones, the man who makes sound effects with his mouth. Andrew Rubin as Martin. Donovan Scott as Leslie Barbara.

Kim Cattrall as Karen Thompson. G. W. Bailey as Lieutenant Harris. George Gaynes as Commandant Lassard.

The script is broad. The comedy is mostly physical and verbal hijinks. The film has aged in ways the original audience couldn’t have predicted. Some sequences are uncomfortable by modern standards. The original is the strongest of the seven. The fall from there is steep. Winslow is the best thing in the first film by a wide margin. Every time he opens his mouth and a machine gun comes out, the movie wakes up, and I’d happily watch a whole film of nothing but that.

The Decline

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985) introduced Bobcat Goldthwait as Zed and added the formula’s first variation. The third film, Back in Training (1986), brought back Zed and added more recruits. The fourth, Citizens on Patrol (1987), added a civilian patrol angle and was the last to feature Guttenberg. The fifth, Assignment: Miami Beach (1988), was the first without him. The sixth, City Under Siege (1989), continued without him. The seventh, Mission to Moscow (1994), arrived after a five-year gap and tried to revive the franchise with a Russian setting.

Each entry recycles more of the previous film’s material. By the fourth entry, the sequences had become recognizable templates: the Blue Oyster Bar scene, the giant Hightower lifting something, the Jones sound effects routine, the Tackleberry weapons obsession. The franchise was producing variations of itself instead of new material. The audience accepted the recycling for a while. Eventually they didn’t.

The repetition loses me. The Blue Oyster Bar gag was funny once, and by the fourth trip it’s so predictable you could mouth along. I’d have ended the series after the second film and spared everybody the trouble.

The Cast

The real charm of the franchise is the cast’s evident affection for each other. Most of the principals worked together across multiple films. They knew each other’s timing and the audience expectations for their characters. The performances are competent ensemble work even when the scripts are weak.

Steve Guttenberg’s career trajectory is the franchise in miniature.

He was a major commercial star in the mid-1980s. The Police Academy films were one of three franchises he was anchoring at once (along with Three Men and a Baby and Cocoon). His departure after the fourth entry was partly career strategy and partly script exhaustion. He never recovered the leading-man status he had during the franchise’s peak. The franchise was the high point of his career as a leading man.

I feel a little sorry for Guttenberg. He’s likable in a way that’s hard to fake, and I think he was right to walk away when he did. The films without him have a hole in the middle that nobody else fills.

Is Police Academy (1984-1994, all seven films) worth watching?

6/10 across the franchise, and that average flatters the back half. The first film is a 7 and I enjoy it. The second is a 6.

By the fifth you’re at 5, the sixth is a 4, and Mission to Moscow is a 3 I’d happily wipe from the record, a tired cash grab that ships the gang to Russia for lack of anywhere else to go. Watch the first film. Watch the second if you enjoyed it. Skip the rest unless you want to see how a franchise runs itself into the ground.

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