Thanks Largely to a Star-Making Turn from Bobcat Goldthwait, Police Academy 2: The First Assignment is Surprisingly Non-Terrible!

I'm as surprised as you are!

When I think of Police Academy, I think of the guy from the Police Academy movies who makes funny noises with his mouth. How does he do that? It’s MAGIC! 

Then I think about Bobcat Goldthwait. That’s odd, considering the cult icon isn’t in Police Academy. He makes his series debut in its sequel, 1985’s Police Academy: Their First Assignment, alongside other newcomers Howard Hesseman, Tim Kazurinsky, Colleen Camp, and Julie Brown.

Goldthwait feels deeply ambivalent about stardom, fame, and celebrity in general and the kind of stardom, fame, and celebrity that comes with being the funny-talking breakout star of a smash-hit sequel to a raunchy police-themed sex comedy in particular. 

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is the kind of hit that cast members feel the need to distance themselves from publicly. Goldthwait has made his disdain for the movies that made him a hero to mouth-breathers and half-wits all over our questionable land a running theme in his stand-up. Howard Hesseman refused to return for sequels and expressed regret for appearing in the film in the first place. David Graf, meanwhile, is quoted in the film’s IMDB trivia section as saying that he would be willing to appear in a series of Police Academy movies, but only for the money. 

This is unusual. Usually, when people are involved in something so successful, they at least refrain from publicly disparaging it or expressing regret that they were ever involved in the first place. 

But there’s something about this series that makes its alum feel the need to distance themselves from it for their own sanity and self-respect. 

Goldthwait’s thorny feelings about being known for decades as the crazy-talking guy from the Police Academy movies are understandable, but he is amazing in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment. 

As gang leader Zed (a role that was apparently offered to Bill Paxton, who instead chose to make Aliens, a slightly different kind of sequel), Goldthwait is that rarest and most wonderful of entities: a true original. When he exploded onto the big screen with his star-making turn here, Goldthwait was something audiences had never seen before: a feral, wild-eyed lunatic who seemed to be choking on his own words.

You never know what will come out of Goldthwait’s mouth or what it will sound like. Goldthwait performance is punk rock in an otherwise middle-of-the-road motion picture. 

There’s a reason Goldthwait headlined studio movies in the years ahead despite seemingly not wanting to be an actor or have to do that voice more than was necessary. Goldthwait was perhaps too good for his own good. He was so brilliant that he attained a form of stardom that he did not seem to want at all, the kind that gets you cast as the lead in talking horse movies.

Goldthwait plays a crook who alternates between rage-choked aggression and unexpected bursts of pleasantness. 

He’s like no gang leader we’ve ever seen before or any gang leader who has ever existed, a wildcard in a surprisingly stacked deck.  

Goldthwait’s presence alone makes Police Academy 2: The First Assignment a vast improvement over the dire original.

Zed is the eccentric head of the Scullions, a gang terrorizing the city. Captain Pete Lassard (Hesseman) is outgunned and outmanned, so he asks his brother Eric (George Gaynes) for recent alum from his Police Academy to help end the kooky crime wave. 

Steve Guttenberg returns as sarcastic smartass Officer Carey Mahoney. He’s less cocky and funnier here primarily because he spends much of his time onscreen undercover as a member of the Scullions wearing a hilariously fake mustache and what looks like a “1980s New Wave Gang Member” costume from Spirit Halloween. 

David Graff comes into his own as Tackleberry, a gung-ho gun freak who approaches his job with an over-the-top military zeal. 

Police Academy 2: The First Assignment was written by Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield. They got their start on Saturday Night Live in the grim early 1980s. They went on to cushy careers as Eddie Murphy’s screenwriters of choice, with credits like Coming to America, What’s Alan Watching?, Boomerang, The Nutty Professor, Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, and Coming 2 America. 

Unsurprisingly, their script feels like a series of loosely interconnected sketches about law enforcement. They take a page from the Saturday Night Live playbook by pairing gun nut Tackleberry with Corporal Kathleen Kirkland (Camp), an addition who behaves exactly like him. 

Goldthwait’s blatant theft of the film is even more remarkable considering that it’s the very special motion picture that made the whole world fall in love with the guy from the Police Academy movies who makes funny noises with his mouth. 

The guy from the Police Academy movies who makes funny noises with his mouth is a righteous avenger who uses his unique brilliance to trick people around him in an endless series of zany pranks. 

He can do this because nobody assumes that they’re being furtively manipulated by someone capable of making seemingly any noise using only their mouth unless they see the guy from the Police Academy movies who makes funny noises with his mouth in action and are familiar with him and his work. 

Hesseman has expressed shame over having lowered himself to appearing in a Police Academy sequel, but he’s an always-welcome presence who elevates the film with his presence and chemistry with Gaynes. 

Gaynes and Hesseman are perfectly cast old pros who get the most out of a creaky old gag like Hesseman’s Captain Pete Lassard asking his brother for six strapping men and the buffoonish police academy commandant wrongly assuming that he’s asking for a quintet of studs to have sex with and not new, younger officers to help fight the Bobcat Goldthwait-fueled uptick in crime. 

I am not proud to admit that I chuckled at that gag and several others. Thanks mainly to Goldthwait’s star-making performance and his strong bond with fellow newcomer Tim Kazurinsky, Police Academy 2: The First Assignment rises to the level of affable mediocrity. 

Granted, Police Academy set the bar almost impossibly low, but this marks a decided improvement over a movie that was both wildly successful and, unfortunately, influential. 

There are as many ugly, horny cinematic bastard children of Police Academy as there are of Animal House, and they’re just as bad. 

I wasn’t expecting much from Police Academy 2: The First Assignment, so I was pleasantly surprised that it’s intermittently amusing and full of dumb fun and jokes that induce what I like to call double laughter, in that you laugh a second time at yourself for finding something so stupid chuckle-worthy. 

Will this mark the high watermark of the franchise? Possibly. Goldthwait would return for two more sequels, presumably because they paid him a great deal of money to do so, and living in a capitalist society, you, unfortunately, need money, but he would be a pig in the subsequent sequels instead of a hoodlum. 

You can’t tame Bobcat Goldthwait. He’s a wild man! He’s a wild card. He’s a comic genius. He deserves better than to have his anarchic genius corrupted for pro-cop propaganda. 

Police Academy 2: The First Assignment was directed by Jerry Paris, another television veteran best known for playing the neighbor on The Dick Van Dyke Show and directing Happy Days. 

Police Academy 2: The First Assignment didn’t retain its predecessor’s director or screenwriting team, but that worked in its favor. Paris, Blaustein, Sheffield, and a stacked cast get the most out of well-worn material. 

This would be worth seeing for Goldthwait alone, but it, thankfully and surprisingly, has more to offer than an incendiary, magnetic turn from one of the most misunderstood and underrated performers in comedy history. 

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