1987's Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol Found the Franchise on Lazy Autopilot
I never thought I would write these words, but Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol is overly derivative of the previous two films in the series
Nothing speaks to the surreal laziness and shameless self-cannibalization of 1987’s Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol more than its decision to send perpetually pranked antagonist Lieutenant Carl Proctor (Lance Kinsey) into the same damn gay biker bar FOR THE FOURTH CONSECUTIVE FILM!
By this point, Carl should recognize the seedy neighborhood where the bar is located as well as the exterior of the bar, having been there at least three times. This is barely a joke. Its ostensible humor is rooted in the out-there notion that homosexuality exists, and hilarity inevitably ensues when heterosexual men are confronted with the specter of gayness.
I never thought I would write these words, but Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol is overly derivative of the previous three entries in the series. It subscribes to the notion that if it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it. But what worked before feels exhausted and lazy now.
It feels like Gene Quintano’s screenplay was constructed by stapling together chunks of the scripts for the previous two Police Academy movies.
For much of the Reagan decade, Police Academy movies were churned out at a movie-per-year rate. Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol hit theaters just eleven months after Police Academy III: Back in Training. It’s assembly line filmmaking, naked in its cynicism and contempt for an audience it is sure will still laugh the fourth, fifth, or sixth time at a gag that was never funny.
This tired retread finds George Gaynes’ Commandant Eric Lassard implementing a program that empowers citizen volunteers to assist an overworked and underpaid police force in crime-fighting endeavors.
Gaynes brings a light, playful touch and a child-like sense of wonder to the role. He’s an oblivious idiot blundering about but also has an ingratiatingly grandfatherly air. His scenes have a genial aura lacking from the rest of the film. It’s a tremendously appealing performance from an old pro.
The program brings together disparate types like skateboarding smartass Kyle Rumford (David Spade), the gargantuan Tommy "House" Conklin (Tab Thacker), and pistol-packing little old lady Billie Bird.
When he’s not miscast in a lead role, Spade can be an amusing little shit. He made his film debut here, and you can tell that the filmmakers knew that he had a bright future and used him as extensively as possible.
Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol marked the end of an era. This is the final film to feature the classic lineup of Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), and Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurkinsky).
The trio did not return for the fifth entry in the series. They don’t seem particularly engaged here. Guttenberg was too busy filming Three Men and a Baby to re-up for Police Academy V: City Under Siege. That turned out to be the correct move. It was a blockbuster, and while Police Academy V: Assignment Miami Beach was a solid money-maker, it had the enduring shame of being the fourth sequel to a movie that wasn’t any damn good to begin with.
As Yogi Berra would put it, it’s deja vu all over again! Did you enjoy it when the wacky rapscallions over at the Police Academy subjected stuffy snob antagonist Captain Thaddeus Harris (GW Bailey) to all manner of wacky pranks? Then you’ll at least be able to tolerate the many gags here involving the man’s humiliation.
Did you like it when the bosomy instructor, played by Leslie Easterbrook, thrust her enormous breasts in the face of a martial arts-adept Japanese police officer in a previous entry? Guess what? The same thing happens here.
Goldthwait remains the highlight. The film’s only halfway clever gag involves making Zed, a howling, screaming, viscerally unnerving threat to propriety and the natural order, the face of the department through community involvement.
In the film’s only funny line, Zed responds to a woman who says she doesn’t believe he is a policeman because he isn’t in uniform by saying, “Regular human clothes make people more comfortable.”
The sadism is so over the top that I began to feel sorry for Captain Harris. He’s a condescending asshole, but he is also a human being with dignity, yet they trick him into spraying Mace under his armpits, glue a megaphone to his face and, of course, trick him into associating with homosexuality.
If you entered a gay bar by accident in the 1980s, you couldn’t just realize your mistake and leave. If the Police Academy films are to be believed, you had to dance with a leather daddy. This is PG, so we never learn whether they end up doing more than that or if constantly going to a gay bar “accidentally” awakens something in the men.
Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol found the lucrative, lowbrow, and widely mocked and derided series on autopilot. It’s a rerun, a rehash, a sorry assemblage of gags from previous films sloppily served up to an audience defined by their low expectations and questionable taste.
Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol ends with its cast soaring to the heavens in hot air balloons in a frenzy of empty spectacle. Unfortunately, the film itself does not find the franchise reaching giddy new heights. It’s closer to a nadir.
Guttenberg, Kazurinsky, and Goldthwait did not go out on a high note. In Police Academy V, Guttenberg’s role was filled by Matt McCoy, a fine character actor but a half-ass and unsatisfying replacement for Guttenberg.
It’s about to get grim, y’all! We’re about to engage with the Matt McCoy era when everything felt cut-rate, low-budget, off-brand, and half-assed. I may even come to regret my decision to watch and write about every Police Academy series.
Nah. I’m in this for the long haul. I’ve only got three more movies, and then I can cross “watch and write about every Police Academy movie” off my bucket list.
The exciting thing? It’s the only thing on my bucket list. So when I finish watching and writing about 1994’s Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, I can officially die content, having achieved my only life goal.
So, you know, I got that going for me.
We had this on VHS when I was a kid and would have it on in the background running over and over. Even so, all I remember aside from the obligatory gay bar joke is the joke about human clothes Nathan mentions, Bobcat (or apparently, “Zed”) reciting the Gene Gene poem, and Harris being in a porta potty that was somehow lifted into the middle of a stadium just before the national anthem, obliging him to stand with his hand over his heart because, like many, he thinks the anthem is apparently the same as the pledge of allegiance. The Gene Gene poem is funny but, as “Zed” says to his audience, he didn’t write it.
::its decision to send perpetually pranked antagonist Lieutenant Carl Proctor (Lance Kinsey) into the same damn gay biker bar FOR THE FOURTH CONSECUTIVE FILM! ::
After four times? He's into it, but too uptight to go consciously. It's kind of like bondage that way—"Please don't force me to have what I really want done done to me!"
Which would have been funny (or funnier) if the fourth time he showed up, he saw it was the gay bar—and just sighed happily and tore off his shirt or something!
::This is PG, so we never learn whether they end up doing more than that or if constantly going to a gay bar “accidentally” awakens something in the men. ::
I see you thought the same thing!