Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)

The fourth entry in a franchise that had, by 1987, settled into a comfortable rhythm, this picture concerns Commandant Lassard's Citizens on Patrol program, a volunteer initiative that puts civilians alongside sworn officers, and Captain Harris's determination to see it fail. It opened at number one in the United States and earned a great deal of money. It also earned a zero percent approval rating from critics, which is a difficult number to achieve and suggests a certain purity of purpose. The conflict is bureaucratic vanity, nothing more.

The ledger of social consciousness is nearly blank here, and the few entries are inherited rather than authored. The ensemble includes Black performers and an Asian-American officer, but these are franchise regulars playing broad comic types, present because the series established them three films ago, with no commentary on identity attached. Lieutenant Callahan is photographed as an object of ogling; her interior life is not a subject the film can be bothered to raise. Tommy Conklin is large, and that is the joke. Zed screeches, and that is also the joke. Neither is offered as an identity requiring affirmation.

What remains is a sequence of pranks, a jailbreak, a hot-air balloon chase, a pair of biplanes, and ninjas, assembled with the enthusiasm of a schoolyard. There is a premise, that civilians might capably assist the police, but a premise is not a moral. The film has no lesson to deliver and no apparent interest in acquiring one. The soundtrack includes a song titled I Like My Body, which is the closest the picture comes to a statement of values, and it is a disco track. We are left with an honest artifact: a comedy that wants nothing from its audience but laughter, and gets very little of that.