Sequel City – Police Academy 3 – Back in Training

Sequels don’t automatically suck just because they have numbers in their titles.  We’re hardwired to think that they do…the same way we’re conditioned to flock to them opening weekend.  In this column, I’m going to examine this strange love/hate, passive-aggressive phenomenon, one movie at a time.  Welcome to Sequel City!

This may be hard to believe, but there were six Police Academy films released in the ‘80s.  Six!  The casts changed a bit as time went on, but they were basically all the same films.  Steve Guttenberg would lead a group of uniformed misfits against the machinations of a scheming bad guy.  Helping Guttenberg is the imposing Bubba Smith, the squeaky little black lady who could raise her voice when she needed to, the stern buxom blonde, the psycho gun enthusiast, and of course, the dude who made all those sound effects with his voice.  Also there, although he’s never much help, is the wonderfully batty George Gaynes, whom everyone from my age group also knows as Punky Brewster’s adopted father, Henry.

I recommend seeing Police Academy 3 – Back in Training. Why would I?  After all, everyone knows that the higher number a sequel is, the worse it is.  Why not recommend the original?  Well, because this is the first movie I saw in the series, that’s why.  I was too young to see the first two pictures when they came out, and my family didn’t really care about them when they came out on VHS.  And at that time, if they didn’t rent a movie, I wouldn’t see it.  Cable changed all that, and either HBO or Showtime had Police Academy 3 in heavy rotation at one point.  I mean like once a day.  Being the chunky little coach potato I was (good thing that changed!), I saw Police Academy 3 many, many times.

You see, this film wasn’t a sequel to me.  I saw it before I saw the others.  When I got older, I went back and saw the first film, and yes, it is better.  Sure, the premise was fresher, but mostly I think it’s because it was much edgier—more racial humor, sexist humor and many more adult situations.  There’s nothing in the third movie as raunchy (or funny) as the original’s podium scene.

But still, I’ve always had a soft spot for this film.  The dopey boat chase, Bobcat Goldthwait screeching at people, and so on.  It’s a decent sequel, and a nice bit of fluff.  Light and airy, not to be taken seriously.  If you know the franchise, this is another chance to see these characters again.  But if not, you certainly won’t need to have seen the first two films to understand who everyone is—I figured it out when I was nine.  Wacky, slapstick humor, funny situations and funny characters.  A pleasant way to spend an hour and a half in between reading Tolstoy.

The plot: the Governor announces that the budget is being cut, and one of the city’s two police academies is being eliminated.  One of them is run by the bad guy from the second film, and other by Gaynes (Punky Brewster’s dad), where everyone from the first two movies graduated.  A competition is set up—the academy with the best graduating class gets to remain open.

The bad guy puts a plan in motion to sabotage Gayne’s police academy.  So Gaynes calls all his old pupils back to help train a new batch of recruits.  Of course the new recruits are hopeless screw-ups just like their teachers, and the bad guy and his lackeys try to fudge things up.  Everything comes to a head while the good guy’s academy class is being evaluated in the field by a competition committee—and wouldn’t you know it, a real robbery is happening at the same time…

Ok, not a complicated plot.  Doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, really.  The attraction here are the wacky characters.  But a major problem with this movie is that there are way too many of them.  This isn’t an ensemble cast—it’s a freakin’ mess.  The old guys are now all instructors at the police academy—Guttenberg, squeaky, Bubba Smith, sound effects, stern blonde, psycho and Punky Brewster’s dad.  Seven good guys.  In an admittedly cool move, the film takes civilians from the first two movies and plugs them into the recruit class.  Bobcat Goldthwait is now a screeching cadet instead of a screeching gang leader, Tim Kazurinsky is now a wimpy cadet instead of a wimpy store owner, and so on.  Ok, so there are five cadets we have to know—we’re up to 12.  Then there are the four bad guys, and the mostly-neutral chief rounds out the list.

17 characters?  Come on!  Of course, there is no need to spend time digging deeply into any of these people—they are all just stereotypes.  But 17 characters are way too many for a 90 minute movie.  No one gets enough time in that kind of time crunch, especially not the acknowledged star of these films, Steve Guttenberg.  He’s in the background of this film, whereas he was front and center in the first two.  People enjoy questioning what exactly ‘80s audiences saw in Guttenberg, but I don’t think he was that bad.  Not transcendently brilliant, but not bad.  And without enough of his glib, anti-authority shtick, the movie suffers.

Even with these flaws—and the fact that the humor is a dumb as stapling three tatter tots together—this is worth seeing today.  Here are a few entertaining scenes to back that up.

Entertaining Scenes:

• The series’ theme comes up over a shot of the city.  I always thought it sounded like the theme to The A Team myself.
• George Gaynes slaps a woman at the Governor’s ceremony, trying to kill a bug.
• The gang gets back together at Gaynes’ office, and Gaynes has trouble with his chair.
• The new recruits are introduced in the same way the old ones were back in the first film—an overlong, overlapping car chase leading to the front door of the academy.
• Gaynes drives into a lake.
• A boxing match between competing cadets.
• Guttenburg and gang pull a locker room prank on the bad guy.
• Gaynes gives an address to his staff and cadets.  You might notice how many of these scenes involve him—I think he’s just brilliant.  He’s kind of like an older, less-functioning version of Leslie Nielsen from The Naked Gun films.
• The bad guy’s right hand man ends up naked and alone in the series’ politically incorrect gay bar, The Blue Oyster.
• The good guys stumble onto a plot to rob the function where the governor and his rich cronies are lunching at the yacht club.  This scene goes on too long, but it’s got some decent comedy/action in it, culminating in a bitchin’ jet ski chase.

Police Academy 3 – Back in Training is a short, mindless little comedy.  I’m not saying that long, complicated dramas don’t have their place, but escapism is important too.  Not to mention that I’d much rather live in a world where the cops were bumbling idiots with good hearts than the opposite.

Comments?  Ideas for other sequels to cover?  Death threats?  I welcome them all—thanks for reading.

-Steve B