I’ve got to admit: I don’t know the history of how the 1984 movie, Police Academy was made. What I do know is that this vile film somehow got itself six sequels in the second half of the 1980s, and made the world a worse place. Six! Someone, somewhere, somehow… must have liked it. How very depressing.
I imagine a Hollywood boardroom of mahogany cigar smoke and creaky chairs. The cine-reel whirs and clicks into action as a large man in a suit pulls down blinds across the high-rise windows. An hour and a half later, those smoky old white men (and it had to have been smoky old white men; it always is) slap each other on the back in self-congratulation at their sure-fire, trash-humoured, poke-fun, minority-bashing smash hit.
Let’s start with the good points, shall we? I don't want to race ahead of myself.
Well, good point, actually.
This will sound odd but I genuinely think the best thing, and perhaps the single good thing, about Police Academy is that it just isn’t funny. I’m not even sure it was funny in 1984. And that lack of humour is undoubtedly its soaring high point, because honestly, if I’d laughed once, just once, I think it would have given this garbage-juice a modicum of credit, and, for reasons I’m about to go into, it really wouldn’t deserve an ounce of it. Not an ounce. Not even in the 80s.
Oh it tries to be funny. There are joke set-ups and punchlines; there are humorous characters and twitchy-faced bad guys (one even gets launched into the rear end of a horse), there are snap backs and comebacks, comedy car scenes and crazy comeuppances, farces and foibles galore. Of course there are! Through a certain 1980s lens, you can clearly see the old-fashioned clownery those writers and producers were going for. The only trouble is that they haven't realised that that lens is filthier than a New York subway.
Thank heaven then, that I didn’t laugh. My mouth did drop open though, plenty of times. And not in a good way.
Our introduction to the protagonist (Steve Gutenberg) has him commanding a woman to show him her thighs. That’s followed by him sending two recruits to a gay bar for a joke, where they are trapped inside by the (forgive me) leather chaps in leather chaps, who look like they’re going to pummel the recruits with pool queues, but (oh the hilarity) instead treat them to a spot of camp ballroom dancing! The 80s gays, ladies and gentlemen: they'll either thump you or do a pirouette.
Then… Oh then. There is a scene in which a black female rookie takes a driving test in a panda car and accidentally runs over someone’s foot. In a rage, he, a young white police officer hops about the screen, and in a fit of rage, calls her something that is ... well, so racially offensive, I simply cannot write it down. Seriously, I can’t even hint at it with asterisks. There’s a moment’s shock, before, in a silent display of strength, Moses Hightower, the cardboard-cutout black strongman of the troupe, steps forward, and upturns the panda car onto its roof.
I guess we were supposed to cheer at the sight of prejudice literally being overturned by a big black man. I had a micro-moment of hope that the movie was taking a turn for the noble. Unfortunately, Hightower then gets booted out of the academy by the very white, very antagonistic lieutenant, and the original police officer's offence - the unspeakable word, is never referenced again. So, no cheering from me. Never referenced! There you go kids, there’s a word for you and your playground, and it’s consequence free, look! Now run along and bully some black people.
Honestly, it is so offensive.
Moments later, someone uses the word ‘homo’ as a comedy insult, and before we know it, there’s a riot happening downtown, provoked by some more black guys who accidentally got hit on the head by apples, and irrationally started thumping the nearest white and Hispanic folk.
If you ask people what they remember about Police Academy, my guess is that they’ll think of Michael Winslow with his sound-effect beatboxing. They might remember Mahoney pranking Harris or Mauser in later films, and they might wonder whether it really was a young Kim Catrall in their fading memories. But my guess is that most of us who watched this in the 80s missed the fact that this whole thing is off-the-chart offensive.
Oh sure, it’s mean-spirited too. It’s badly put together, it’s about as funny as a day out in a sceptic tank, and it’s a shambles… but it’s still hard to imagine a worse way of depicting the police force in the USA, even in 1984!
I wouldn’t be surprised if the racism and homophobia of Police Academy entered the psyche of Gen-X and set the reputation of law enforcement back by an entire generation. It's uncomfortable watching it from four decades into the future, and I do wonder whether there's a sorry sorry thread that leads from this kind of thing, all the way to George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I feel sick even thinking about it.
I don’t know how this evil film got made. Perhaps you could watch it as a study of how far we’ve come. Perhaps you might even be tempted to forgive it for being ‘of its time’ and ‘dated’.
To be honest though, Police Academy, (coming out in the same year as Beverley Hills Cop and Ghostbusters don’t forget) should never have left that editing room, should never have been released, and those creaky old white men who let their misogynistic, racist, and homophobic inclinations seep through the on-screen bilgewater… ought to have been arrested and prevented from ever going anywhere near a movie script ever again.
Six sequels indeed. I felt ill as the credits rolled, and not just from the lewd ending. If anyone ever fondly reminds me of this movie ever again or claims that it was 'so bad it was good', I honestly will start googling for sceptic tanks to suggest instead.
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