Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)

It is probably not a commentary on anything to report that I liked Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment more than its predecessor only because I found the previous film to be a complete washout.  With this sequel, I laughed a few times.  Not enough to deem this a good movie, but I laughed two or three times and so I suppose that’s progress.

Police Academy 2 rises above its origin only in the fact that it gets the recruits out of that otherworldly boarding school and gets them on the streets.  The plot here finds the Academy commandant (George Gaines) sending the recruits to a big city police precinct run by his brother (Howard Hessman) who’s officers are old and tired and have let the streets become overrun with violent gangs.

Okay, well, there’s an idea.  The only task left is the plug in a lot of silly spot gags involving the cops running down and bumbling their efforts to clean up the streets.  The problem is that the jokes don’t work.  Well, not entirely.  There is some stuff in here that I liked.  I liked one filthy cop (physically filthy) who keeps a dirty apartment and has socks so soiled that they stick to the side of his locker.  I also liked Bobcat Goldthwaite as the leader of the violent gang.  Something about his baby-talking whining bit made me laugh, especially when he complains that the episode of “Family Affair” that he is watching is a re-run.

The one thing that really brought the movie above complete dreck, however, is Michael Winslow.  He’s a stand-up comedian whose specialty is making weird electronic sounds with this vocal chords and his mouth.  He seems to be a human Foley artist who can imitate the sounds of a badly dubbed karate movie or make electronic Terminator-style sounds.  I first spotted him in the corners of a few of the early Cheech and Chong movies and he was the only thing in the original Police Academy movies that made me smile.  He’s funny.  I just wish he were in a better movie.