Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988)

Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I hate to do this, but I must be fair to say, this is the worst one, and I mean out of every one, including the 94 Moscow entry. Police Academy 6 is a comedic relief after this. Laughs and gags, just keep misfiring or are they just so weak as is the film. This actually got a Blimp award as Warner's favourite movie. You get to a point in this, where you no longer look at it as a comedy. There were only a couple of things I laughed at in the whole ninety minutes of film, one scene that just sticks out, is the mistaken first class trip, Harris and Proctor take with a few farmyard animals. Even the opening scene, with these two clowns, the gags and it's lazy writing is just water weak. Lassard, who's passed retirement age (this hidden info discovered, thanks to our two bumbling unlikeables who reveal it so of course, the long avenging Harris can take Lassard's place) has been invited to Miami for a commendation farewell party, so he invites his favourite academy of misfits along, where they inadvertently bump heads with a band of bumbling jewel thieves, lead by a familiar snooty face, Rene Auberjonois from the Benson t.v. show, and he laps the bad guy up wonderfully. Too we meet Lassard's likable grandson, also a cop, and a damn fine one (Matt MCcoy) where the laughs and gags, just keep on misfiring, Auberjonois and the beautiful Miami bird watching sights, the best things about this dreaded Academy entry. The delicious Janet Jones as a hot cop with secret deadly karate skills, was a nice edition, where really after, her career just dropped off. An actor I do like too, and didn't mind in this was Archie Hahn as one of Auberjonois's henchman. This is just one of those one's, where the intended funny bits, just keep missing, where our lovable Academy's traits, like Jones's sound tricks, even Tackleberry's over enthused gun play and new choices of weapon gags missed too. Could it be, we're sick of them. That shark in the water gag, at first I thought that shark was intentionally not real, like someone mucking around. No it was real. And Harris's lotion stained message on his sleeping body gag, was something else, that totally didn't go over, as does this supposed comedy. Even it's faded poster design isn't catchy. Check out too how many, revulsed and disapproving looks Harris and Proctor from potentially available babes.

Steve Guttenberg said "no" to being in this or any other sequels that may follow, a good choice. Cmndt. Lassard (George Gaynes) has reached retirement age, to the delight of Capt. Harris (G.W. Bailey), who is planning to take over his job. The cinematography is stark and bare, with only the soundtrack adding some effect. From an artistic standpoint, there were some plot elements and character developments I didn't think were totally needed. They do however drive the story, which seemed to be their purpose, so I can accept them. This is probably the worst of the sequels, with nothing to laugh at. Heartfelt and riveting from the first frame to the last.

Bubba Smith, Michael Winslow, David Graf, Leslie Easterbrook, Marion Ramsay, Matt McCoy, Janet Jones, Rene Auberjonois, G.W. Bailey, Lance Kinsey and George Gaynes star in this 1988 comedy sequel. Commandant Lassard (Gaynes) is selected to visit Miami, Florida for a convention honoring him as policeman of the decade and learns he has reached the retirement age. He invites cops, Hightower (Smith), Jones (Winslow), Tackleberry (Graf), Callahan (Easterbrook) and Hooks (Ramsay) with him. Harris (Bailey) and Proctor (Kinsey) decide to take a private plane and get into mishaps. The misfits also encounter a jewel thief (Auberjoinois) and his 2 lackeys who kidnap Lassard who thinks it's all a police demonstration, but eventually realizes it's the real deal. McCoy plays Lassard's nephew, Nick who is a cop and Jones plays Kate, a cop who Nick Falls for. This isn't a bad sequel and Rene is great in it. I still recommend this.

Okay, so something happens in the first few minutes of Police Academy 5 that must surely be the most meaningful and artistic bit of creative story-telling that has happened before or since in the entire series. As Captain Harris and Proctor are breaking into Chief Hurst's office to get their hands on his files, Proctor worries that they're breaking the law. "We're not breaking the law, Proctor," Harris assures him. "We are STRETCHING it." After he says this we cut to Proctor, who pulls on a piece of bubble gum between his fingers which stretches…and then breaks. In a rare moment of thoughtfulness, Proctor appeared to me to look at the gum and discover the stretching and breaking are pretty much the same thing.At any rate, it's telling that such a simple thing should come across as one of the most creatively meaningful things in the series, but I do have to say that Police Academy 5 is not nearly as bad as I have read that it is. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it's one of the better sequels in the whole bonehead franchise.In his search, Harris has discovered that Lassard has reached the state's mandatory retirement age and thus sets about on a mission to force him into retirement so that he can take over the job himself. The only problem, of course, is that Harris still doesn't command a scrap of respect from anyone in sight, while Lassard lovingly oversees his academy like a clueless grandfather. You see, he is so good at obtaining the respect of his men through the timely feeding of his ever-present goldfish that he has earned himself the coveted "Police Officer of the Decade" award (normally I would think that such an award would go to an actual police officer, but that's just me).So a ceremony is scheduled to be held in his honor in beautiful Miama Beach, so the whole Police Academy Crew packs up and heads on down to the sunny south for the festivities. Harris, of course, employs Proctor's considerable wisdom and skill to book them two first class tickets to Miami, and the two end up traveling on a rickety plane full of farm animals with loose bowels. The crime this time is a group of astonishingly stupid diamond thieves, who manage to pull off a brilliant diamond heist and get away without a trace, but can't make it through an airport without tripping all over themselves and accidentally swapping their diamond-laden bag with Lassard's goldfish-laden bag. You have your small-time crime boss with the slicked back hair and quick tongue, and his two meathead sidekicks who hop along behind him going "whatever you say boss" and "boss are you okay boss?" If only they had taken these bumbling morons down a notch or two, they could easily have been the funniest thing in the whole movie. The rest of the movie follows the diamond thieves as they try to get their diamonds back before the real crime boss kills them all, and before Lassard figures out that that video camera that he's using isn't a present from the guys but the hiding spot for the stolen diamonds. As you know, this is the first Police Academy movie that's missing Steve Guttenberg as Mahoney, and he's replaced by the charming Matt McCoy, who plays Commandant Lassard's nephew Nick, an ace Sergeant on the Miami Beach force. The character is a noble effort, but Mahoney is definitely missed. I must have watched this one the most when I was a kid because I remember it more than any of the others in the series, and I watched them all over the last couple weeks. I particularly remember the scene when Tackleberry fires off the assault weapons in shooting practice and then when they try to take the guns back he says, "NO!! I NEED these!!" Classic! This particular installment in the series is famously bad, but anyone who tells you it's not any fun definitely needs to lighten up a little bit. The plot culminates in an exciting sequence when the little crime boss gives in to the frustrations of multiple failed attempts to get their bag back and just decides to kidnap Lassard in front of the whole congregation. Lassard of course, true to form, thinks it's all a demonstration and even helps the bad guys out along the way, winning their friendship and respect in probably the funniest element of the whole movie. Of course the fourth sequel in the Police Academy franchise is not a good movie, but it was never made with any Academy Awards in mind. In fact, since there are no wet t-shirt moments like in part 4 (actually I was a little disappointed by this), you might even say it's a kid's movie, since it's the kids who are going to enjoy it the most, except for those of us who haven't seen it since we loved it as kids ourselves.By the way, if you manage to get it on DVD, make sure to check out the little ten minute documentary about it, it's hilarious! I loved the ones about the earlier films, where they get most of the original cast together to talk about their experiences in making the movies. My favorite is Mission to Moscow, where producer Paul Maslansky talks about what a great film-making event it was making Police Academy 7, finally and officially revealing himself to be genuinely delusional. But this one comes close! Here's an actual quote from director Alan Myerson speaking about part 5 – "For it's day, it was just short of a James Bond movie."Uh-huh.Note - at one point, one of the bad guys calls Harris "sharkbait." If they had copyrighted that, think of the killing they could have made off of Finding Nemo!