Lazy Movie Weekend: Dammit, Mahoney!

There are three things you should know about me before you continue reading this edition of Lazy Movie Weekend:

1. I watched a lot of age inappropriate movies when I was younger (say between the ages of 11-14). My parents are in no way to blame for this; I'm sneaky. This horrifies my mother to this day.
2. Since I don't have cable anymore, I rely on Netflix and Prime Video for my televised entertainment, so I've been binge watching random shows and re-watching a ton of movies.
3. Once I start down an entertainment path, I can't stop until I reach the end. I will watch all twelve seasons of Murder, She Wrote. Oh yes, I will. 

I don't remember the first time I watched Police Academy. The movie was released in 1984, so I was only five years old. I'm guessing it was around the time the fifth movie, Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach was released, so 1988. This was the 1980s: there was no rating system on cable television, USA Up All Night existed, and if your house had a second television in the paneled basement, chances are you got away with watching whatever as long as you went to bed on time. I've watched so many ridiculous and terrible movies in my lifetime, but I can honestly say I love them all. For every Troll 2, there is a Moving Violations. One is just bad, the other has some redeeming value. Or better yet, there's a UHF.

I love the Police Academy movies. Yes, there are a lot problems with these movies that I can talk about at length, and will talk about a bit today, but at the end of the day, they're the perfect example of one of my favorite sub-genres of 1980s comedies: the misfits/ragtag group of (insert whatever they are) band together to save something (the day, community center, city) by (break-dancing, selling cookies, being police officers). If you tell me a movie is about a ragtag group doing something good for their community, I will watch the hell out of that movie. I like movie citizens being good citizens, especially if they do it in a zany way.

Since I've been relying on streaming services for television entertainment since I moved, I've found myself watching the most random mix of movies and shows. This week, I watched High Spirits, a terrible movie from 1988, which stars Steve Guttenberg, Darryl Hannah, Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, and Peter O'Toole. It's a comedy about an Irish castle that's trying to save itself from closing by inventing ghosts, when if fact, it already has them. Hilarity ensues. I also watched Girls Just Want to Have Fun, featuring the amazing Helen Hunt. For whatever reason, watching High Spirits made me wonder if the Police Academy movies were available on either service. I hit the actual jackpot: all seven movies are currently on Netflix. I don't know if Netflix is listening in on my conversations or knows how much I love these movies and wanted to give me a present. I don't even care. I spent the week watching all seven movies, and it was wonderful. And yes, that means I watched five movies starring Steve Guttenberg in one week. Not all heroes wear capes.

I'm not going to go the traditional LMW route with a long list of each movie and what's going on when. I don't want to write about these movies for the next seven weeks. Instead, I thought I'd talk through some of the highlights and low lights of the series. One note: this was the first time I watched the seventh movie, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. It came out in 1994, and I was past watching these movies on the regular by then. Let's grab some donuts (couldn't help myself), and dive in for Police Academy.

• As I mentioned, my favorite sub-genre of 1980s and 1990s movies is the misfits/ragtag group of people banding together to save whatever it is that needs saving. Why wouldn't we eventually get to a police version of this? In every movie in the series, the cadets and eventually officers save the day. From riots to gangs to the governor being kidnapped the Police Academy team is your go-to group of misfit cops.
• Carey Mahoney - the leader of the group. We live in a world where Steve Guttenberg was once considered a sex symbol (that's literally the premise of Three Men and a Baby). In addition to the early Police Academy movies, he was also in Cocoon, Short Circuit, and Diner. He had a long stage career and would eventually get into directing and producing (his production company is named after his high school drama teacher). In the early movies, Mahoney was the troublemaker, the one leading the madcap adventures, and stealing hearts. Kim Cattrall and Sharon Stone both play love interests for him. He's loyal to Commandant Lassard (more on him in a minute) and you can see how much fun the core cast must have had making these movies. They have a true rapport and Guttenberg's Mahoney is a big reason for that.
• The women of Police Academy. It would be easy to dismiss these movies because of some of the more problematic elements within them, specifically the movies "comedic" take on race and gender. In re-watching these movies, I realized how powerful the women actually are. I'm not claiming the Police Academy movies are feminist, but none of these women need to be saved nor do they take the nonsense lightly. Leslie Easterbrook (Callahan) and Marion Ramsey (Hooks) are tough in their own ways, and take no shit from any of these men, both on the force and criminals. Sharon Stone plays a journalist in the fourth movie, and she ends up flying a plane to help catch prisoners who've planned a jailbreak. The women of Police Academy should have their own movie. I'd watch a Callahan/Hooks spin-off in a heartbeat. 
• Lovable, bumbling Commandant Lassard. If you watched Punky Brewster as a kid, you knew George Gaynes as the foster dad on the show. That was one of my favorite shows, and he was the perfect blend of curmudgeon and lovable tv dad. He played Lassard, the lovable but accident prone leader of the Police Academy in every movie. The officers all love him and want to help him be successful. He also has a pet goldfish he takes everywhere, and is probably one of the franchise's best sight gags. He's everyone's grandpa. Gaynes died in 2016 so he won't be making an appearance in the new movie if it ever happens. I hope maybe Mahoney gets to be the new Commandant. 
• The best villain and sidekick combo in a comedy series - Captain Harris and Proctor. G.W. Bailey is hilarious as Captain Harris, the scheming foil to Commandant Lassard. He wants to be in charge of the Police Academy so badly that he will get in the way no matter what. Proctor is his equally inept sidekick. They provide some of the best laughs in the movies and the cadets always manage to make a joke out of them. His spin as a ballerina in the seventh movie made that movie worth watching. If the Police Academy movies aren't enough G.W. Bailey for you, check him out in the first Mannequin movie.
• The supporting cast. Bubba Smith (Hightower), David Graf (Tackleberry), Marion Ramsey (Hooks), Michael Winslow (Jones), and Leslie Easterbrook (Callahan) appear in most, if not all, of the movies in the franchise. They each bring a fun element to the movie from Hightower's tough guy who's really a sweetheart to Tackleberry's gun nut, these movies don't work without this group. Bobcat Goldthwait was even in three of the movies. Ensemble casts can be challenging, but there's a lot of balance in the movies. We know Guttenberg and Matt McCoy are the "stars," but they can't do it alone.
• Matt McCoy, the poor man's Steve Guttenberg. Guttenberg left the franchise after the fourth movie, and Matt McCoy took his place in the fifth and sixth installments as Lassard's nephew Nick. While not as good as Mahoney, Nick has a a certain late 1980s hero's charm about him. He was also the husband in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Try watching that movie after seeing him in these movies; it's so hard to take him seriously.
• I randomly know someone who was in the third movie. Back in college and right after, I worked as box office manager for a musical theatre company, Summer Lyric Theatre (SLT). One summer, we did a production of The Sound of Music, and Ed Nelson was cast at Captain Von Trapp. Nelson is probably best known for playing Michael Rossi on the tv series of Peyton Place. He was born New Orleans, went to Tulane, and eventually made it as an actor in Los Angeles. He eventually came back to New Orleans and that's when I met him at SLT. Nelson played the governor in the third movie, who gets kidnapped during a battle of the police academies, and of course, Mahoney and team save the day. I never got to ask him about being in the movie, but it's fun to see him in the movie. He passed away in 2014 after a long acting and teaching career. 
• The seventh movie, Mission to Moscow. I didn't see this movie when it was released in 1994. I watched it for the first time today. It's exactly what you think a movie about the Russian police bringing Lassard's team to Russia to help stop a Russian mobster will be. Did I mention the Russian mobster is played by Ron Perlman (yes, Hellboy) and that Claire Forlani (her feature film debut) and Christoper Lee are also in the cast? The mobster has created a video game that's taken the world by storm, and wants to create a new version that will install a code on every machine it's played on so he can get access to all computers everywhere. Yes, this move about computer fraud and a phishing scheme...in 1994. I like this one better than Assignment Miami Beach, but not as much as Citizens on Patrol. 

There's been talks for the last few years that an eighth movie, Police Academy: Next Generation is in the works. The original production team is on board, and Steve Guttenberg is named as the director. It would be interesting to see what kind of shenanigans the newest team of misfits would get involved in. I would be 100% here for it. 

I don't know if Netflix and Prime Video are reading this or listening to my conversations, but if you're taking requests, here are some of my favorites that I would love to see again (yes, a few of these can be rented on Prime, but I need them to be included in my membership):

• Feds - Rebecca De Mornay and Mary Gross as FBI recruits? Sign me up!
• Moving Violations - a movie about traffic school featuring the youngest (I think) Murray brother, John in the lead role.
• Modern Girls - Daphne Zuniga, Virginia Madsen, Clayton Rohner, Cythina Gibb & shenanigans around L.A. - what more do you want in a movie? 
• Just One of the Guys -The bad guy from Karate Kid is in this movie being an even bigger asshole, so you know it's going to be a great movie. 
• Plain Clothes - Another favorite sub-genre of mine: adult (usually a dude) goes undercover in high school to solve a crime and ends up falling in love with a teacher. 
• Pump Up the Volume - I have this movie on DVD, but not everyone is so lucky. It's basically a movie about students' rights to education and free speech packaged as a Christian Slater movie with a killer soundtrack. 
• Sing - the 1989 Peter Dobson/Lorraine Bracco musical, not the cartoon. Yes, Lorraine Bracco was in a musical about a New York City high school about to close, but of course, the students band together to try to save. Musical version of my favorite sub-genre of movies.