At the Risk of being Cynical, Greed, Rather Than Self-Expression, Fuels 1988's Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach

At least there's a diamond smuggling subplot!

The Police Academy films are ensemble comedies, but Steve Guttenberg was their star. He was the handsome, smirking, cocky leading man of the first four entries in the series. 

In time-honored show-business tradition, starring in the Police Academy movies made Guttenberg so wealthy, famous, and popular that he no longer had to appear in Police Academy movies.

Guttenberg was too busy making a fuck-ton of money starring in the massive blockbuster Three Men and a Baby to make a smaller but still substantive amount of cold hard cash to swallow his pride and put on the police uniform one more time for Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. 

The Diner star wasn’t the only fixture of the franchise who opted out of a screamingly inessential fourth sequel to a movie that wasn’t good in the first place. Scene-stealer Bobcat Goldthwait graduated to starring roles in ill-conceived vehicles like 1988’s Hot to Trot. 

Hot to Trot wanted to be Tim Burton’s follow-up to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, just like I wanted to lose my virginity to Jennifer Connelly. We had equal chances of realizing our dreams. Tim Kazurinsky, Bobcat’s fussy comic foil and yin to his yang, bowed out as well. 

To put things in sports terms, something I do at least once every few years, Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach is the equivalent of a rebuilding year. The expensive free agents have left for more lucrative, less embarrassing gigs, the new kid is green and unproven, and the stakes, ambition, and expectations have nosedived. With the fourth Police Academy sequel, It’s not about winning; it’s about putting on a respectable performance with so many key elements missing. 

Guttenberg was on auto-pilot in the first four entries in the franchise. He broadcast just how little he cared about the silly comedies and his role in them. Yet Police Academy 5 nevertheless suffers from his absence. Goldthwait’s non-participation is even more disastrous. Without the ragged, punk rock energy and aggression Goldthwait brought to the scene-stealing role of criminal turned crime-fighter Zed, the film feels as low energy as Jeb Bush taking a nap after drinking too much Earl Grey tea. 

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach is defined more by the actors who aren’t in it than the ones who are. 

The franchise smartly shifts the focus to a beloved fixture of the series who wasn’t too good or popular for the franchise; George Gaynes as bumbling, big-hearted Commandant Eric Lassard. 

Commandant Lassard is like Ralph Wiggum in that he lives in his own private world, a realm that is crazier and more magical than the dreary reality that we are all forced to live in. 

Gaynes gives his character a light touch, a gift for physical comedy, and an innate likability. Gaynes is the grandfather that we all want, a twinkly-eyed, child-like exemplar of WASP benevolence. 

The fifth Police Academy movie in as many years, 1988’s Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach takes a page from the Big Book of Unnecessary Sequel playbook and takes the increasingly exhausted show on the road. Alas, a change in latitude did not result in a change in attitude.

The film’s feeble plot finds Commandant Lassard traveling to Miami Beach to receive a prestigious award at a police convention. The daffy copper brings along all of the veterans from the previous films who did not want more money or had better gigs: David Graf’s gung-ho Sergeant Eugene Tackleberry, Bubba Smith’s large, powerful Lieutenant Moses Hightower, Marion Ramsey’s squeaky-voiced Sergeant Laverne Hooks, the busty and intimidating Lieutenant Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), and, of course the Guy Who Makes Crazy Noises with His Mouth. 

If you enjoyed the Guy Who Makes Crazy Noises with His Mouth recreating a poorly dubbed martial arts film in EVERY MOVIE IN THE WHOLE FUCKING SERIES, then you are in luck because that once mildly amusing bit is lazily recycled along with plenty of other gags. 

En route to the land of babes, bikinis, and sun, Commandant Lassard ends up accidentally switching luggage with a trio of thugs led by René Auberjonois, cast against type as a mafia hood.

Diamond smuggling plays a bizarrely central role in any number of ill-conceived comedies of the 1980s and 1990s. I am particularly tickled that it can be found in 1994’s Exit to Eden, which combined a hilariously vanilla conception of BDSM, the softcore pornography of Anne Rice, Dan Aykroyd, and Rosie O’Donnell in leather fetish gear, and a wildly unnecessary diamond smuggling subplot, yet somehow failed all the same. 

In Police Academy 5, Commandant Lassard is kidnapped by the bad guys eager to retrieve the purloined diamonds. However, he’s so dense that he thinks that the abduction is an elaborate performance involving the police convention. 

It’s a hokey bit of comic business executed with aplomb by Gaynes, even if the plot makes no sense initially and somehow grows more nonsensical as it progresses. 

Poor Matt McCoy, who would go on to have a fine career as a character actor, makes his film debut as Sergeant Nick Lassard, Eric’s nephew and a hotshot addition to the police force. 

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach plugs McCoy into the Guttenberg role of the sexy smartass with an eye for the ladies and a gift for mischief. The filmmakers gave McCoy what could have been a breakout role without giving him much in the way of screentime or comical business. 

McCoy’s most memorable moment onscreen is also his sketchiest. At a pool one lazy afternoon, the womanizer with the bedroom eyes begins fondling the back of a gorgeous stranger, played by Janet Jones, who is better known as the wife of hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky. He professes to be a masseur, but Jones responds appropriately by hurling McCoy into the pool, wacky sex comedy style. 

Jones’ looker turns out to be a member of the police force as well, but her character is never developed as anything other than someone who looks ridiculously good in a swimsuit. 

At the risk of being cynical, I suspect that the catalyst for making a fifth entry in a series about the hilariousness of the police force was not self-expression or a desire to comment meaningfully on our unfathomably complex world but rather greed. 

The filmmakers are only in it for the money. I know that might seem harsh, but it’s true. I suspect that will be even truer of the final two entries in the series. That may even be true of other franchises as well! I’ll be following this series up with one on the Nightmare on Elm Street series, so I will be able to tell you firsthand whether the whole “making sequels primarily for money rather than self-expression” bit applies to it as well.