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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, G. W. Bailey, Kim Cattrall
Director: Hugh Wilson
Running Time: 96 mins
Police Academy is an American film about a police academy which resorts to accepting police cadets of any type, no matter how bad or how terrible, however the plan soon backfires due to a group of crazy cadets and their zany pranks.
Basically, if you’ve seen Animal House, you’ve seen this. It’s the same idea, lots of young twenty-somethings all stuck together at some sort of school, and the nature of the comedy is exactly the same too. However, the one main difference between the two is that this has effectively no story, it doesn’t really push itself along, but just sits around watching the same thing happen again and again.
That’s not to say that this isn’t an enjoyable film, it really is. It’s just so insane and farcical that there’s no point expecting any sort of more intelligent comedy, it’s light enough for you to go to sleep and still laugh at and understand, but it’s full of great slapstick and a hilarious variety of characters that really do make this film a joy to watch.
The most impressive thing about this film is it’s fantastic variety, mainly of characters. In Animal House, there were loads of people involved, all very distinct and recognisable, and while that also helped to make the college atmosphere more convincing, it really made for a lot of fun, as this does too, because you don’t end up getting the exact same joke again and again, but with many different people, you can enjoy it quite a bit more.
Unfortunately, the same thing can’t be said for the story, because that really doesn’t have any variety. The whole academy training scenario in which the film is set for the best part of an hour is just a bit too repetitive. The characters are all different, but the story they fall into is an annoying sort of cycle that really does get boring after a while, and even when there is a change of scenario, there’s a tiny bit of excitement, and then it drops back into the cycle again, so, despite how funny this film was, I’ll give this a 6.9.
