It’s official, Captain Lassard. This is now the worst precinct in the entire city! Burglary up 25%, armed robbery up 30%, vandalism up 44%.
The first Police Academy was not good, but obviously it was profitable. The second Police Academy asks, what if we didn’t have a police academy in a movie called Police Academy? The answer is – something worse than Police Academy. For those Police Academy series completists, this movie has the debut of Zed–Bobcat Goldthwait. I had no memory of Zed starting out as a gang leader villain. In this movie he does the broken coiled spring really well. It shows that he had some true acting and comedic talent, hidden underneath all the yelling. It also has the first appearance of Proctor, who plays second fiddle to Lt. Mauser–Art Metrano–in this movie, but later to Lt. Harris, who is sadly missing from this movie.
Last time I said that if you had never seen a Police Academy movie, to not start with #1. I am going to go farther this time and say, even if you have seen one, to actively avoid #2. Other than the opening scene of Guttenberg’s Mahoney on a big police dune buggy on the beach, there is little worth watching.
They all used to be the right color, the right height, the right weight. And they all had Johnsons, Lassard!
This movie came out in 1984. Kim Cattrall is in it, and I didn’t know who she was at the time because Sex and the City hadn’t come out yet. Also I was 2. The shocker for me in going back to this movie, the start of a family friendly series, was seeing that it was rated R. That R was for racism. In the film’s defense, I think the creators didn’t mean to be racist, but they were definitely comfortable with stereotypes in a way that resulted in racist jokes.
If I can identify one progressive thing about the movie, it’s that Commandant Lassard is not homophobic when he thinks that Mahoney—Steve Guttenberg—has given him oral sex and not the prostitute who had recently snuck out of the lectern. The film is preposterous, but within the confines of the premise that Mahoney can’t quit the academy or he goes to jail, and the Commandant has decreed that no-one shall be kicked out, there is room for shenanigans like this. Plus, Lassard gets revenge on Mahoney, so by the film’s logic all is fair by the end. I wonder if the Blue Oyster (Club) scenes were homophobic by 1984 standards. They definitely rely on a stereotype of the fear of aggressive homosexual men, but never cross the line into actually showing them as predators. If you have seen the movie, I bet you have that one song that is always playing on the jukebox there popping into your head.
I won’t sugarcoat this – the movie is bad, but the cast has some real gems. Cattrall displayed an understated charm that went really far in such an over the top movie. G.W. Bailey’s Lt. Harris (“Move it! Move it! Move it!”) was such a great villain that I am glad he came back for the rest of the series. I had a crush on Leslie Easterbrook’s Lt. Callahan, whose name and demeanor were a parody of Dirty Harry that I did not get until I finally saw Dirty Harry. Lastly, what would this film be without Michael Winslow’s Larvell Jones. His ability to mimic sounds might be unparalleled in the history of mankind. He showcased this skill just the right amount of times, in an odd instance of restraint by the filmmakers.
If you have managed to avoid watching any Police Academy movies, then I would recommend keeping it that way. For me there is an element of nostalgia and appreciation of how the characters started out, compared to their arcs over several movies. I actually gave this movie 8 (out of 10) stars on IMDb when I rated it almost 20 years ago. That said, watching this cold, without some good reason, would most likely be an unsatisfying experience.
This was not the first time I had seen this movie. I watched this movie when it came out in high school. Then I rewatched it with my ultimate frisbee team in college. Now I have rewatched it with family. It went from engenius, to trite, to surprisingly good. I find it interesting to see the parts that I remembered clearly, and the parts that I did not.
How do you like them apples? – I always hated that line, because it does not make sense and never will make sense. I hoped that rewatching would provide more context. I felt worse for the phony grad student than I had in the past.
Solving the impossible problem – This one happens pretty much how I remembered it. It got parodied in Community though, so that helps.
It’s not your fault – This got parodied a lot too, so it’s a testament to Matt Damon’s performance that even after the satire, the scene can evoke such strong emotions
Also interesting are some of the key elements that I forgot about.
Best part of my day – Ben Affleck’s confusing quote about the best part of his day. Let me tell you what I do know. Every day I come by to pick you up. And we go out we have a few drinks and a few laughs, and it’s great. But you know what the best part of my day is? It’s for about ten seconds from when I pull up to the curb to when I get to your door. Because I think maybe I’ll get up there and I’ll knock on the door and you won’t be there. No goodbye, no see you later, no nothin’. Just left. I don’t know much, but I know that. The confusion stems from the lack of a goodbye. People want closure, so this is odd.
Not being honest or open with Minnie Driver – I somewhat remembered this part of the film, but I forgot about him hesitating to pull the trigger on moving out of Boston with her.
How/why Robin Williams provides therapy for Matt Damon – He did it for Stellan Skarsgaard and was like the 8th choice.
My friend took us to this bar. If you notice, the table is oddly thin.
To me this is a **** movie. It is enjoyable, filled with emotion and good performances. But there was also room for improvement. Also, the Red Sox suck and the movie’s attempts to make people care about some attachment to them were major missteps, but I understand that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck grew up in Boston, so it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault.
The 2016 Academy Awards Best Picture winner. I was warned to have a couple of drinks because this was going to be very depressing. Poverty. Bad parenting. Drug use. Homophobia. Quite the cocktail for a depressing movie.
****
This beautiful and depressing film presents three acts. i. Little. ii. Chiron and iii. Black. All three names are for the same character (although played by three different excellent actors). The father figure of the film, Juan–Mahershala Ali–says, At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you. Chiron says not to call him Little. The name Black, which was given to him by Kevin, Chiron’s only friend and his great betrayer, does not get said during act iii. That was an interesting choice and probably provides a lens for us to view this film.
Another interesting choice, was to name the primary antagonist “Terrel”, when the person who wrote the story is Tarell Alvin McCraney. This is a very psychological story, since not much happens and cause and effect are not shown very heavily. It was a very subtle movie, but watching it I never got the feeling that I was watching a Best Picture winner. It felt like a foreign film that would only have been nominated for Best Picture in a Foreign Language. Congratulations to director/screenwriter Barry Jenkins for making a movie like this and getting so many people to see it. Stories like these rarely get to reach such wide audiences. That goes triply so for movies about poor, gay Black people.
Jabrody's Movielog 