Police Academy Essay, Research Paper

Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994) 1/2

This movie succeeds on only one mission — the mission to suck. That’s the only way to describe the seventh Police Academy movie. It sucks, so much so that previous entries in the series look like classics in comparison. I can’t say I didn’t expect it to be this bad, because once I saw the copy on the back of the box that read, “Kicking butt-ski! Making you laugh-ski! The Academy is back-ski!” I knew it wouldn’t be up for any Oscars. If the most clever thing you can come up with to describe a movie set in Russia is to put the suffix “-ski” on every word, your sense of humor-ski is underdeveloped-ski.

As the series wears on and gets worse and worse, even people like Bubba Smith are refusing to star in them. Once the top-billed star is Michael “Amazing Mouth” Winslow, it’s time to end the series. But it’s not like George Gaynes (Commandant Lassard), Leslie Easterbrook (Callahan), David Graf (Tackleberry) and G.W. Bailey (Harris) have any better movies to appear in, made-for-Cinemax or otherwise.

The idiot cops are off to Russia this time, in the first Police Academy movie since the end of the Cold War. And it proves without a doubt that the Police Academy movies should have been relegated to the 80’s as one of that decade’s guilty pleasures (like Bon Jovi) that couldn’t carry over into the 90’s with any degree of pinache.

Here, the Police Academy veterans (starting to look a little too old for this nonsense — old but not mature) have to stop a video game manufacturer from infiltrating the computer system and stealing money, or something like that. Sue me if I can’t remember the details of Mission to Moscow. I’m consciously trying to repress the fact that I saw it in the first place. I don’t need to tell you, if you have any sense whatsoever, to stay away from this movie. I can’t tell you why I invested 83 minutes of my life in Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, but I can prevent others from making the same mistake I did. Don’t do it, kids. Don’t.