Police Academy 1-4 (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987) and Diminishing Returns

Consider this. A movie gets released to theatres, video-on-demand, or direct to physical media. People find it. They enjoy it. They enjoy it so much that the studio that made the movie decides that another must be produced. They throw together a script, bring back as many of the actors as they can, and try to recapture the magic. They don’t quite get there. The sequel gets released and is underwhelming. No worries, the studio will try again and see if they can recapture the magic on the third outing. Nope. They can’t do it. They can’t even recapture what magic there was in the second film. But they repeat the process again. Things keep going until the hollow shell of a franchise can’t make any more money and the studio is forced to stop trying. This is called diminishing returns.

Diminishing returns happen when a series has a sharp decline from one to the next and so on and so forth. In movies, there will be one movie of a certain quality that makes a certain amount of money. The next movie will have a lesser quality and make less money. That will keep happening until nobody goes to see the franchise anymore and the money has dried up. The legacy of the franchise becomes how each installment was worse than the one before it. The entertainment return and the box office return diminished as the franchise grew.

Police Academy is a great example of a franchise with diminishing returns. There were seven movies throughout the franchise’s ten-year span. Actors came and went as they joined the ensemble cast and left after two, three, sometimes four movies. Only three main characters remained through the entire film franchise. But, no matter how many sequels were released, none of them could match the success of the first one.

The first Police Academy followed a group of cadets as they joined the academy in the hopes of becoming new police officers. Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg) was a man on the wrong side of the law who was given the choice of the academy or jail. He was joined by a group of eccentric characters including Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), Karen Thompson (Kim Cattrall), Leslie Barbara (Donovan Scott), Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith), George Martin (Andrew Rubin), Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf), Doug Fackler (Bruce Mahler), Chad Copeland (Scott Thomson), Kyle Blankes (Brant von Hoffman), and Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey). Crazy things happened with the ensemble cast of cadets, as well as their superiors Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes), Sgt. Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), and Lt. Harris (G.W. Bailey).

The story revolved around the characters making their way through the police academy. The characters had their various storylines. There were the major stories like Lt. Harris hating this group of cadets and enlisting the help of Copeland and Blankes to make people fail out of the academy. Mahoney didn’t want to be there, but couldn’t quit or he’d go to jail, so he started messing with the higher ups to get kicked out. Then he learned that he could become a good police officer and better leader, so stuck around to help everyone else out. There were smaller story arcs, too. Hooks was a quiet speaker who never seemed like she would have the fortitude to be a police officer, but showed her strength and courage by the end. Moses Hightower showed that anyone could be a great police officer, not just the white people that Lt. Harris felt should be the only people to graduate. It was a bunch of solid A and B stories with some comedic C and D stories thrown in for good measure.

When looked at for more than just comedy, there was some underlying satire to Police Academy that made things work on another level. It wasn’t only about the cadets working their way through the academy. It was about the prejudices within the police force. Lt. Harris was staunchly against anyone that wasn’t like himself being on the force. He didn’t want anyone of another race. He didn’t want any women. He would do whatever he could to stop the force from including anyone that wasn’t a straight white man. That’s why he wanted the cadets out of the academy. Jones, Hightower, and Hooks were black, while Martin was Latino. Thompson and Hooks were women. Barbara was fat. Lt. Harris thought all of them to be unfit for the force. That’s why he chose the two plain white men, Copeland and Blankes, to be his underlings. They were the epitome of the type of people he wanted on the force, regardless of Lassard allowing everyone to get their fair shot. The movie was satirizing, intentional or not, the prejudices within the force. It was satirizing the racism and sexism that run rampant throughout the police. And that helped make Police Academy a stronger film.

The prejudice stuff came to a head in the later parts of the movie. Copeland called Hooks a racial slur during their driving tests. Hightower didn’t take kindly to it and flipped the car that Copeland was in, getting kicked out of the academy in the process. However, when a riot broke out in the city and the cadets were caught in the middle, Hightower returned to save Lt. Harris and Mahoney, who were trapped by a gunman on a rooftop. He tricked the gunman and punched him down a flight of stairs, where Hooks was waiting for the arrest. The racist and sexist lieutenant was saved by a Black man while the gunman was arrested by a Black woman. If the satire about racism and sexism in the force was unintentional, they managed to do a good job unintentionally.

Police Academy was followed by Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment one year later. Commandant Lassard’s brother Captain Lassard (Howard Hesseman) was in charge of the 16^th Precinct and needed some new recruits. He was sent a handful of the cadets from the first film. Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Tackleberry (David Graf), Jones (Michael Winslow), Fackler (Bruce Mahler), and Hooks (Marion Ramsey) came to the precinct to help with the rising crime rate in the area. However, Lt. Ernie Mauser (Art Metrano) wanted the precinct to fail so that Lassard would get fired and he could replace him as Captain.

There was a noticeably different style to the comedy in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment. That could be attributed to the change in the rating of the film. The first film was rated R, which meant that they could have a certain level of swearing, nudity, and other more adult material. The sequel was brought down to a PG-13, meaning it lost a lot of the edge that the first film had. It relied much more on slapstick humour than the first film, which still had quite a lot of slapstick humour. There were broader jokes, geared more towards a younger audience. It lessened the impact.

Most of the satire was gone, as well. Whether it was intentional or not in Police Academy, the underlying concept of the police force being racist and sexist was there. Lt. Harris had wanted to get rid of the cadets because they didn’t fit his image of what a police officer should be. Lt. Mauser was different. There was none of that bigotry. He wanted them to fail so that he could succeed. He didn’t care who the new officers were. All he cared about was that they did bad at their jobs so that Captain Lassard would be let go. Nothing else mattered. He was a greedy man who wanted to get ahead by any means necessary, which was an interesting enough bad guy. It just meant that there would no longer be that political commentary that brought the first film together so well.

There were a couple things that were done well in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment. Eugene Tackleberry got a romantic subplot. Mahoney had one in the first film, Tackleberry got it in the sequel. He fell in love with his new partner, Sgt. Kathleen Kirkland (Colleen Camp), a female motorcycle officer who was as into weaponry as he was. There was one brilliant scene where they were about to have sex for the first time and there were thirty seconds of them taking off their various guns and holsters. The other thing that the film did well was bringing in a true criminal threat. There was a gang loose in the city causing problems. They were built up through the entire movie with their leader, Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), getting enough screentime to feel like a formidable threat. The first film only brought in the criminal villain for the final act. Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment built the criminals up through the entire movie. It made the showdown a little stronger at the end.

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment wasn’t as good as the first film. It still had some strong aspects, but it didn’t reach quite the same highs as its predecessor. It was a step down, though maybe not a big enough step to be considered a major falter. The idea of diminishing returns wasn’t fully there yet. One minor misstep wasn’t going to dismantle the entire franchise. It wasn’t a hollow shell of what it once was. Not yet, at least.

That would change when it came time for Police Academy 3: Back in Training. It came out a year after the second film, meaning that in three years there had been three films. Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Jones (Michael Winslow), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Hightower (Bubba Smith), and Tackleberry (David Graf) were back at the police academy to help Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) and Sgt. Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook) train a new class of cadets so that the governor would choose to keep their academy open instead of the one run by Mauser (Art Metrano).

This was the point where the diminishing returns of the franchise became apparent. Police Academy 3: Back in Training was a rehash of Police Academy without the same level of comedic quality. The characters who were introduced as the new cadets were one-note, without any storylines beyond their comedic character trait. Violet Fackler (Debralee Scott) was the wife of Doug Fackler, from the first two films. Bud Kirkland (Andrew Paris) was Tackleberry’s brother-in-law who could punch hard. Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait) was back, reformed, to talk weird. Carl Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky) was a shopkeeper from the previous film who was the nerd of the new cadets. Then there was Tomoko Nogata (Brian Tochi), a foreign exchange cadet from Japan. None of them really moved beyond those basic character descriptions. They didn’t get any real storylines, outside of Nogata, who fell in love/lust with Sgt. Callahan.

The real romance storyline went back to Mahoney, who met a new cadet named Karen Adams (Shawn Weatherly). She didn’t like him at first, but he won her over by the end. They ended up together, though much like Karen Thompson from the first film, she wouldn’t come back in later movies. Come to think of it, this was so much a rehash of the first film that they didn’t even change the first name of the love interest. In both movies, Mahoney chased after a woman named Karen.

Police Academy 3: Back in Training also fell back on the original Police Academy’s method of saving the real action villain for the final act. One of the cadets was sent to hang out with the Governor at a dinner party when he stumbled upon a plan to kidnap the Governor. The entire police academy came out for a waterfront chase through Toronto… Er… the Metropolitan area. This was, perhaps, the best action scene of the first four Police Academy films. However, it lacked the tension it should have had, since the movie hadn’t built to it. It just kind of happened at the end of the film.

However, when it came to the rehash of Police Academy that was Police Academy 3: Back in Training, the biggest issue was the rating of the film. The first film had been rated R. That allowed it to have more adult material and edgier comedy. The second film was PG-13, meaning it had to tone down on some of that humour to appeal to a broader, potentially younger audience. The third film skewed even younger, with a PG rating. That meant that it lacked most, if not all, of the edge from the first film. The jokes ere much, much broader. There was barely any sexuality, profanity, or adult jokes. Most of what had made the comedy work in Police Academy was gone in favour of upping the slapstick comedy, and that would only get worse in the fourth film.

Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was another rehash of the first film, only with a rushed training program for regular citizens who weren’t going to be actual police officers. It was basically a posse comitatus story. Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Tackleberry (David Graf), Jones (Michael Winslow), Lassard (George Gaynes), Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky), and Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook) were back to train the citizens of their city to be better prepared to stop crime. As the returning Lt. Harris (G.W. Bailey) said, they wanted the citizens to do the job of the police.

Most of the newer characters in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol were new remixes of the older characters. Kyle Rumford (David Spade) and Arnie Lewis (Brian Backer) were teenagers that led Lt. Harris in a skateboard chase. Instead of going to juvenile detention, Mahoney got them into the Citizens on Patrol program, just like he and Jones were sent to the academy instead of jail. Tommy ‘House’ Conklin (Tab Thacker) was a big guy, like Hightower, who just happened to know hightower. Lois Feldman (Billie Bird) was an old woman who was a gun nut, just like Tackleberry. If the change of location in the second film didn’t quite work, and the new characters in the third film didn’t quite work, the people behind the franchise weren’t going to give up. They were going to try the same exact formula that made the first film a success. Only, again, on a PG rating instead of an R rating.

The few new character types that were in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol didn’t really do much. There was Laura (Corinne Bohrer), a photographer who joined the Citizens on Patrol program and fell in love with Zed. It was maybe a little better than the Mahoney romance in Police Academy 3: Back in Training, but it wasn’t good. There was also Claire Mattson (Sharon Stone), a reporter doing a story on the Citizens on Patrol program to tell people whether or not it actually worked. She really didn’t do anything throughout the entire movie, until she had a hidden plane flying talent used in the climax.

Speaking of the climax, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol tried to outdo the climax of Police Academy 3: Back in Training, but couldn’t because of the ridiculous vehicles. Instead of a chase through the waterways of the city, it was a chase through the skies. Some criminals performed a jail break, got into a plane, and tried to flee the city. The police and the Citizens on Patrol were hot on their tails, commandeering a couple other planes as well as some hot air balloons. There’s never anything exciting about a hot air balloon chase. They move so slowly that it takes away the thrill of a speedy race.

The Police Academy franchise was a franchise that was all about the diminishing returns. That was especially true of the first four films, and it all came down to the franchise trying to compensate for the problems they thought were present in each film. The first movie was successful and made $150 million. They tried to build out the world in the second movie, but didn’t recapture the same audience. The sequel only made $115 million. To try and get that audience back, they moved the story back to the academy. That didn’t work, with the third film only making $107 million. In a last ditch effort to recapture that magic, the fourth film was once again set at the academy, though this time with new characters that more closely resembled the original characters. It still didn’t work. The fourth movie made just over $75 million. The quality, effort, and box office diminished throughout the four films. There were still three to come, but the franchise was solidified as one of diminishing returns.

It can be tough for a movie franchise to maintain any level of success. Too many factors are at play. A creative team could be burned out, having no more stories to tell with those characters. That would result in the movies becoming too derivative. There could be a lack of growth in the characters, which would turn audiences off. If the characters don’t grow, why would audiences want to invest their time in watching them. Tastes could change. There could be an economic downturn. Theatres could close during the box office run due to a pandemic. Actors could leave the franchise. There are a myriad of reasons that a franchise could go on a downward trajectory.

Diminishing returns are when those variables lead to fewer people enjoying a new entry in a franchise and fewer people seeing a new entry in a franchise. When each entry becomes worse in quality and makes less money, as the Police Academy franchise did through the first four entries, a franchise can be said to have diminishing returns. Usually that results in a reboot, remake, move to direct-to-video, or abandonment of a franchise. Every once in a while, a franchise can manage to turn itself around. That’s not usually the case, and that’s when a franchise has truly overstayed its welcome.

There were a bunch of movies in the Police Academy franchise, and I have a bunch of notes for the first four movies:

• Police Academy was directed by Hugh Wilson, who would go on to direct Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Police Academy 3: Back in Training were both directed by Jerry Paris.
• Michael Winslow played Larvell Jones in all four of the Police Academy movies that were covered. He was also in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190), Lavalantula (week 290), and 2 Lava 2 Lantula (week 290).
• Steve Guttenberg and Marion Ramsey were each in the first four Police Academy movies and the two Lavalantula (week 290) movies.
• Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol featured David Spade, an actor who had roles in Jack and Jill (week 101), Sandy Wexler (week 231), and The Ridiculous 6 (week 344).
• Karen Thompson was played by Kim Cattrall in Police Academy. Kim Cattrall could also be seen in Baby Geniuses (week 50), Sex and the City (week 370), and Sex and the City 2 (week 370).
• Leslie Easterbrook appeared in Police Academy, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. She had a small role in Lavalantula (week 290).
• Bobcat Goldthwait played Zed in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. His first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance was in Freaked (week 131).
• George Gaynes, David Graf, George R. Robertson, and Bubba Smith were each in the first four Police Academy movies.
• John Hawkes made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week in Police Academy. He previously popped up in Steel (week 127) and Freaked (week 131).
• Brant von Hoffman was in Police Academy and Police Academy 3: Back in Training. He already appeared in the Sunday “Bad” Movies when he was in Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Art Metrano played the main villain in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Police Academy 3: Back in Training. He had a part in Malibu Express (week 383) as well.
• Brian Tochi appeared in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184), then returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Police Academy 3: Back in Training and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Another actor who was in Police Academy 3: Back in Training and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was Jean Frenette, who also showed up in Snake Eater II: The Drug Buster (week 320).
• Bruce Mahler was in the first three Police Academy movies.
• G.W. Bailey played Lt. Harris in Police Academy and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. He also had a small, uncredited role in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.
• T.J. Scott and Scott Thomson were in Police Academy, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Four actors had their first three Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. They were Arthur Batanides, Tim Kazurinsky, Lance Kinsey, and Andrew Paris.
• Greg Anthony appeared in the first two Police Academy movies.
• Three actors appeared in Police Academy and Police Academy 3: Back in Training. They were Doug Lennox, Debralee Scott, and Georgina Spelvin.
• Kay Hawtrey was in Police Academy and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Colleen Camp and Jackie Joseph appeared in both Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Police Academy 3: Back in Training and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol featured Jack Creley and Paul Maslansky.
• Bruce McFee was in Death Race (week 9) and Police Academy.
• Barry Greene was in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50) and Police Academy.
• Michael J. Reynolds appeared in both Iron Eagle II (week 90) and Police Academy.
• Finishing off the first Police Academy, it featured Don Lake, who was also in Super Mario Bros. (week 248).
• Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment had an actor named Brian J. Williams, who could also be seen in Santa with Muscles (week 211).
• Church Ortiz was an actor in both Xanadu (week 216) and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.
• Theodore Rex (week 223) actress Jennifer Darling showed up in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.
• Peter Van Norden returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment after being featured in Gigli (week 225).
• D.C. Cab (week 293) and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment both featured Diana Bellamy.
• To end off Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, there was Marshal Silverman, who could also be seen in Wild Wild West (week 296).
• Chas Lawther appeared in Iron Eagle IV (week 90) and Police Academy 3: Back in Training.
• The other returning actor from Police Academy 3: Back in Training was David James Elliott, who would go on to be in Gooby (week 166).
• Tony Hawk did some filmed skateboard work in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. He also showed up in Parental Guidance (week 27).
• Juliette Cummins returned from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (week 46) in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Another actor from Freaked (week 131) appeared in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. It was Derek McGrath.
• Finally, Sharon Stone was a reporter in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. She was the villain in Catwoman (week 174).
• Have you seen the first four Police Academy movies? Have you seen any of them? Did you like the ones you saw? Did the franchise have diminishing returns? What other franchises have had diminishing returns? Which ones didn’t? Tell me all about this stuff or whatever you want in the comments or on Twitter.
• Twitter and the comments are also good places to suggest movies that I should check out for these posts. If there’s a movie that you think I should cover in some way, feel free to tell me about it. My eyes and ears are always open.
• While you’re at it, head on over to Instagram and check out Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always trying to find some fun stuff to share over there.
• This was a long post and there’s a little bit more I have to do before you head off. I have to tell you what movie will be coming up next. That movie was one of those ones from 2019 that people were talking about. It featured John Travolta being his most John Travolta. It featured Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit behind the camera. It was called The Fanatic. That’s what I’ll be watching for next week and I hope you’ll join me to see what I have to say. See you then.