Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment arrived in March 1985 with the confidence of a film that knew exactly what it was. The cadets of the 1984 graduating class have been dispatched to the 16th precinct, the worst in the city, where a graffiti-tagging gang called the Scullions has reduced the local police force to a punchline. Director Jerry Paris keeps the proceedings brisk and the jokes low. The result earned 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and still cleared 115 million dollars worldwide. Siskel and Ebert devoted an episode to terrible sequels and counted two laughs. They were being generous, but they were counting.

The film's cultural ledger is thin, and it is thin honestly. Bubba Smith, Marion Ramsey, and Michael Winslow occupy prominent comic roles, and their presence registers as casting rather than commentary. Nobody in the screenplay pauses to explain them, which in 1985 was simply how an ensemble worked. There is no romantic or political architecture beyond the formula. Officer Kathleen Kirkland exists to share Tackleberry's enthusiasm for firearms and then to marry him in the closing scene. Gags about bodies are aimed at the bodies, not offered in celebration of them. A smog-choked tunnel serves as a punishment posting, not an environmental warning. Zed's gang vandalizes property and the film takes no position on property. The eccentric behavior of the recruits is material for pratfalls, never a diagnosis.

The remainder is a machine for slapstick, assembled without an agenda and lubricated by a body cavity search, an epoxy shampoo, and a Mr. Microphone. It lectured no one. It improved no one. It opened at number one on more than sixteen hundred screens, made its money, and spawned further installments before the decade closed. We can classify it cleanly and move along. Some films are documents of their moment. This one is a document of a Tuesday.