6 / 10
Police Academy is the comedy franchise that defined the rapid-decline model of sequel filmmaking. Hugh Wilson directed the 1984 original.
That 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. Six 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.
For Writers
An ensemble comedy benefits from giving each character one schtick the audience can identify them by. Police Academy works because the audience can immediately recognize Hightower as the giant, Jones as the sound effects man, Tackleberry as the gun enthusiast, and so on. Each character is a single joke executed reliably. The lesson is that ensemble shorthand requires every member to be reducible to one or two visible traits. Subtle characterization in an ensemble usually means the audience can’t keep them apart.
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. The fifth, Assignment: Miami Beach (1988), was the last to feature Guttenberg. 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.
For Writers
Franchise extensions that recycle material instead of producing new material exhaust their audience within four or five entries. Police Academy made it through seven. Most modern franchises can’t stretch that far before the audience notices. The lesson is that returning audience members want familiarity in the recipe and novelty in the dish. Recycle the structure. Vary the content. If you recycle the content as well, the audience eventually realizes they’re paying to see the same film again.
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 fifth 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.
For Writers
Long-running ensemble work creates real chemistry that no single production can manufacture. The Police Academy cast had been together for years by the later films. That history is visible on screen even when the writing isn’t. The lesson is that working with the same collaborators over time produces something that can’t be assembled quickly. If you can build an ensemble across multiple projects, the cumulative result will have a quality that one-off productions can’t match.
Craft Note
Michael Winslow’s sound-effect performances are the franchise’s most distinctive craft element across seven films. Winslow’s vocal mimicry of guns, vehicles and ambient effects drove the physical comedy, and nobody else in the franchise could do it. A single performer’s signature ability can define a franchise’s identity even when surrounded by ensemble work that varies in quality.
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.
