Police academy is a comedy film made in 1984 which was directed by Hugh Wilson and produced by Paul Maslansky. The film was released on the 23^rd of March ’84 and the running time was around 96 minutes.  It is the first of the seven movies in the Police academy ‘’series’’, and in my opinion, it’s the best one of them by far.

The plot is basically this: The local police force has a severe shortage of police officers so the chief police decides to lower the requirements that are used to rule out the not so great candidates. This means, that the general level of physical, and sometimes mental wellbeing within the new police officers is drastically worse. A lot of conversations are held so that it could be decided, whether the new candidates will stay or not. Commander Eric Lassard has a different opinion. He thinks that the future police officers should stay and finish the academy. And in fact he’s right, because they save the town from a horrifying riot that suddenly occurred.

The characters are very memorable. Everybody, who has seen a Police academy-movie, is able to name at least one character. This is mostly due to the fact that every character has his/her own special ‘’ feature’’, for example, cadet Larwell Jones, played by Michael Winslow  is truly outstanding with his famous sound-effects. There are also many other memorable actors, such as Steve Guttenberg ( as cadet Carey Mahoney) and Bubba Smith ( as cadet Moses Hightower). Hightower’s name is actually ‘’true’’, because of his great length and strength. One funny pair of characters is Thaddeus Harris and Carl Proctor. They interact with each other like no other I’ve ever seen. So in other words, the actors are wisely chosen and they give their characters a personal ‘’touch’’.

The movie was filmed entirely in Toronto Canada and the various studio sequences were filmed at Lakeshore Studios. The camerawork is in general very good indeed and the soundtrack seems to fit into the movie rather well. The soundtrack consists of songs, that are mostly very ‘’bluesy’’. Most of the songs are performed by a musical group called Jack Mack and the heart attack. But undoubtedly the most famous songs of the soundtrack are the march at the beginning of the movie, and the melody, which starts to play at the ‘’Blue Oyster’’ bar. But one of the most remembered things about all of the seven Police Academy-movies has to be the awesome sound-effects performed by Michael Winslow.

All in all it could be said, that the movie is really excellent in pretty much every way. The soundtrack fits to the movies age perfectly with its bluesy sound from the 1980’s. In my opinion this movie should belong to the top 10 comedy movies ever made. But there is an intriguing question; what in the name of all that’s holy were they thinking, when they decided to make 6 sequels to this masterpiece?

Written by Tomi