reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/09/85)
Moving from the more exotic world of film festivals, let's
look at some Hollywood potboilers, specifically, "Police Academy
II: Their First Assignment" and "Porky's Revenge". Both style
themselves as raunchy comedies, both are sequels to successful
films, in both cases the people who made the originals them have
moved on. Both movies also flaunt an anti-authoritarian atti-
tude, which is much more interesting in the case of "Police
Academy II", since, after all, its heros are, of necessity, au-
thority figures. Wacky, irresponsible police academy candidates
are one thing. Wacky, irresponsible police officers are another.
However, introspection is hardly a feature of this kind of film,
so don't expect that "Police Academy II" has much to say about
this issue. You might get some private amusement by bearing it
in mind while watching the film, though.
In "Police Academy II", the recent graduates are assigned to
a disaster area of a precinct in the unlikely hope of cleaning it
up. Villainous lieutenant Art Metrano is trying to oust good
captain Howard Hessman, and nothing can save him except the
serendipitous outcomes of our heros' incompetencies. In "Porky's
Revenge", the kids are trying to win the state basketball cham-
pionship and get the coach out of hock with Porky, who has set up
his den of iniquity on a riverboat. Neither plot is of any value
whatsoever. Both films use their stories to hang set piece comic
bits off of, and laden it with totally extraneous subplots. The
writers seem to have forgotten how much comic mileage can be got-
ten out of sticking to a single story.
The major question, of course, is, how funny are these
movies? Almost any sin can be forgiven a comedy if it's funny
enough. "Police Academy II" is funny enough. "Porky's Revenge"
isn't. "Police Academy II" (hereafter referred to as "PA", for
brevity's sake) is peppered with amusing jokes and has some nice
visual comedy. "Porky's Revenge" ("PR", which is the film's only
hope of making money), is lacking in comic invention. It tries
to rerun slight variations of routines from the first two films,
with little success. Little original material is used, and what
there is isn't very good. In addition, "PR", following somewhat
in the footsteps of "Porky's II", tries to interpolate some sup-
posedly heartwarming do-gooder stuff. It doesn't wash. "PR" al-
ready seems interminable, so the addition of this totally unamus-
ing material whose only purpose seems to be to "elevate" the
moral tone of the film just adds to the tedium.
As stated earlier, both films try to trade on a loose atti-
tude of disrespect towards authority. "PA" has problems, since
two of its authority figures, the precinct captain and his broth-
er, the head of the police academy, are nice guys, and all of our
wild and crazy heros are authority figures themselves. "PA"
proceeds in blind disregard for these facts. "PR" has troubles,
too, as some of the old foes are rehabilitated, requiring new
foils. These new characters are pallid and uninteresting. Only
Porky himself is any real challenge, and the film is unable to
extract laughs from the prospect that he might actually shoot the
kids in the head.
An interesting phenomena about these type of films is that
they want to give the impression that they're wild, that anything
goes, and yet, in many ways they are extremely timid. They go
far out of their way to avoid giving offense to feminists ("PA"
much more than "PR", but that film, also), blacks, homosexuals,
Jews, Hispanics, old people, and almost all other minorities.
This may give them fewer problems with protests, but it also
leaves them with fewer targets for satire. They only attack the
easy ones which can't fight back, like intellectuals, parents,
teachers, and politicians. Most of the jokes in both films in-
volve making a member of one of these safe groups look silly, or
sex or bathroom humor. Some people may think this is daring
(such as the ten year olds at the showing of "PR" I saw), but it
doesn't impress me much. The great satirists have no fear. Mel
Brooks attacks almost anyone, as does Richard Pryor. Stanley Ku-
brick satirized the eggheads and politicians in "Dr. Strangelove",
but more common people came in for their share of jabs in that film,
too. Essentially, the makers of "PR" and "PA" don't attack a
single target that isn't completely safe. They take no chances
at all, using only the same kind of material which has been used
a dozen times before. All controversy has already been removed.
Too often, all laughter has, too.
As raunchy comedies go, "PA" isn't bad. The recruits
trigger-happy destruction of a store is quite amusing. Steve
Guttenburg again shows a nice light touch, though he has rather
less to do in the sequel. The other returning characters don't
add much. Howard Hessman's character is too much a good guy to
get laughs in this type of film. Some of the other new charac-
ters have funny moments. For those with a taste for this sort of
film, "Police Academy II" probably won't disappoint you.
"PR" isn't really worth the trouble. The jokes aren't very
funny, it isn't as raunchy as it would like you to think (or
thinks itself to be, for that matter), and there isn't a shred of
originality. None of the actors add anything to their charac-
ters, anything worth having, at least, and the "kids" are getting
more than a little long in the tooth for these roles. The ulti-
mate destruction of Porky's riverboat is a decided anti-climax.
Children who haven't seen many films of this type might get some
naughty giggles out of it, but I can't see this film in any way
contributing to the upbringing of a child, so parents have no
good excuse for letting them go see it. "Porky's Revenge" is a
good one to skip.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher