Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow (1994, directed by Alan Metter)

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Russia has a problem. Mob boss Konstantine Konali (Ron Perlman, slumming) has created a video game so addictive that the people playing it don’t even realize that it’s actually a sophisticated computer virus that allows Konali to take control of almost any security system. As a result, Moscow has been hit by a string of robberies. The Moscow police commandant, Nikolaivich Rakov (Christopher Lee, slumming even more than Perlman) knows that he doesn’t have the resources to stop Konali so, as so many have done before him, he decides to contact Commandant Eric Lassard (George Gaynes) and asks for help.

In others words: Police Academy Goes To Russia!

Well, some of the Police Academy graduates get to go. After the box office failure of City Under Siege, there was a five year hiatus between that movie and the latest (and last) installment in the Police Academy film saga. During that time, the juvenile boys who made up the franchise’s target audience all grew up and became too cool to admit that they had ever seen a Police Academy film. By the time Mission to Moscow went into production, most of the stars of Police Academy had also either moved on or desperately wanted to create the impression that they had something better to do than go to Russia to take part in the final stand of an aging franchise.

As a result, Lassard only takes Tacklberry (David Graf), Sound Effects Machine (Michael Winslow), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), Harris (G.W. Bailey), and Cadet Connors (Charlie Schlatter) with him to the Russia. Cadet Connors is a computer expert and he is obviously meant to be the new Steve Guttenberg/Matt McCoy style wiseass. He ends up falling for a pretty Russian translator (Claire Forlani). Cadet Connors tries his best but he’s no Carey Mahoney.

Give Mission to Moscow some credit for predicting both the rise of the Russian Mafia and the danger of computer viruses. Otherwise, Mission to Moscow ends the Police Academy franchise in a desultory manner. The cast looks old and even the usually reliable Sound Effects Machine doesn’t bring much energy to his shtick. Police Academy: Mission to Moscow was one of the first American movies to be filmed in Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union and it even features an actor standing in for Boris Yeltsin. In the tradition of a family sitcom doing a special episode of Epcot Center, there’s plenty of footage of the cast standing in front of all of the landmarks but otherwise, Mission to Moscow doesn’t do much with its setting. It’s interesting as historical trivia but forgettable as a movie.

10 years after the series began, Mission to Moscow brought the Police Academy films to a close, not with a bang but with a very exhausted whimper. There was a syndicated tv series featuring the Sound Effects Machine that aired in 1997 but I never saw an episode and I was surprised to lean that it even existed. It’s on YouTube so, someday, I’ll try to watch it. Not today, though.

A Movie A Day #150: Back to School (1986, directed by Alan Metter)

Posted on June 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) started with nothing but through a combination of hard work and chutzpah, he started a chain of “Tall and Fat” clothing stores and made a fortune. Everyone has seen his commercials, the one where he asks his potential customers, “Do you look at the menu and say, ‘Okay?'” He has a new trophy wife named Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) and a chauffeur named Lou (Burt Young). Thornton never even graduated from high school but he gets respect.

However, his son, Jason (Keith Gordon), doesn’t get no respect. No respect at all. Jason is a student at a pricey university, where he is bullied by Chas Osborne (William Zabka) and can’t get a date to save his life. Jason’s only friend is campus weirdo Derek Lutz (Robert Downey, Jr.). When Thornton sees that his son isn’t having any fun, he decides to go back to school!

Back to School is a predictable but good-natured comedy. It is like almost every other 80s college comedy except, this time, it’s a 65 year-old man throwing raging parties and making the frat boys look stupid instead of Robert Carradine or Curtis Armstrong. On the stand-up stage, Dangerfield always played the (sometimes) lovable loser but in the movies, Dangerfield was always a winner. In both Caddyshack and Back to School, Dangerfield played a self-made man who forced his way into high society and showed up all of the snobs. While Back to School is no Caddyshack, it does feature Rodney at his best.

Rodney may be the funniest thing about Back to School but a close second is Sam Kinison, who owed much of his early success to Rodney Dangerfield’s support. Kinison plays a history professor, who has some very strongly held views about the Vietnam War and who punctuates his points with a primal screen.

Also, keep an eye out Kurt Vonnegut, playing himself. Rodney hires him to write a paper about Kurt Vonnegut for one of his classes. The paper gets an F because Rodney’s literature professor (Sally Kellerman) can tell that not only did Rodney not write it but whoever did knows absolutely nothing about the work of Kurt Vonnegut.

So it goes.

Back to School Part II #19: Girls Just Want To Have Fun (dir by Alan Metter)

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For our next film in this series of Back to School reviews, we take a look at 1985’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

And you know what?

It’s true — we do just want to have fun!

The fun in Girls Just Want To Have Fun is pretty much defined by dancing, which is okay with me because I love to dance. However, Girls Just Want To Have Fun had the misfortune to be made in the mid-80s. I have lost track of many 80s films that I’ve watched but I’m still always shocked at how undanceable most 80s music truly was. This film, of course, does contain a cover version of the famous song by Cyndi Lauper and that’s actually a pretty good 80s song. However, the rest of the music (and, by that, I mean the music that everyone in the movie is actually dancing to) is incredibly bland in the way that only music from the decade of We Built This City could be.

As for the film itself, it takes place in Chicago. Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the newest student at the local Catholic girls school. Janey’s overprotective father (Ed Lauter) is in the army and Janey has lived all over the world. Despite that, Janey is not at all worldly. In fact, when she tries to introduce herself to her classmates, all she can get out is that she’s a gymnast and she loves to dance. (When we actually see Janey dancing or doing any sort of gymnastics, Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair always seems to fall in her face, which is certainly one way to hide a stunt double.)

Janey makes one friend at the school. Lynn (Helen Hunt, looking like a teenager but already sounding like a hung over 40 year-old) is about as wild as a girl can be in 1980s PG-rated film. That’s to say, she wears a leather skirt when she’s not in school and, when she babysits, she orders pizza and then allows the baby to sit on it. (Ewwwwwww! There’s a reason why babies wear diapers….) Lynne and Janey are automatically BFFs because they both love Dance TV!

That’s right — it’s DTV! I wonder what that’s supposed to be based on…

It turns out that DTV is having a contest to pick two new dancers! Disobeying her strict father, Janey sneaks out of the house and joins Lynn in auditioning! Lynn’s partner turns out to be so spastic that Lynn doesn’t make the semi-finals. Later, Lynn discovers that her partner was bribed by rich bitch Natalie Sands (Holly Gagnier). I’m not sure why Natalie felt the need to do that since Lynn wasn’t that impressive to begin with. She’s about as good a dancer as you would expect Helen Hunt to be.

However, Janey does make it to the semi-finals, where she’s partnered with Jeff. Jeff is tough and blue-collar and, at first, it doesn’t seem like he and Janey will get along. So, of course, they end up falling in love and, of course, Natalie’s father tries to force Jeff out of the contest by threatening to put his father out of work. Jeff, incidentally, is played by Lee Montgomery. Years before appearing in Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Montgomery played the little kid who gets crushed by a chimney at the end of Burnt Offerings. Burnt Offerings is a really crappy film but I watch it every time that it comes on TCM just so I can see that chimney crush Lee Montgomery. That said, Montgomery actually does a pretty good job of Jeff. You never quite buy him as a rebel without a cause but he still seems like an authentic and likable teenager. Jeff and Janey are a cute couple and that’s all that really matters.

Just as Janey has a best friend, Jeff also has a best friend. Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman) talks too much, tries to sell t-shirts from the trunk of his car, and there’s also a scene were he grabs a random girl’s breasts and makes a comment about using her nipples to tune a radio. Drew is annoying and, once you get over the fact that she’s being played by a young Helen Hunt, so is Lynn. Watching the movie, you kind of want to tell both of them to just calm down for a few minutes.

But you know who is not annoying? Jeff’s younger sister, Maggie, who is played by none other than a very young Shannen Doherty. Maggie was my favorite character because she alone seemed to understand how stupid everyone else in the film was. And she was willing to call them out on it.

ANYWAY — Girls Just Want To Have Fun is one of those movies where next to nothing actually happens. There is an extended sequence where our heroes destroy Natalie’s snooty party with the help of a bunch of punks and female body builders but otherwise, it’s remarkable how little actually happens. That said, some of the dancing is good (even if most of the music is totally bland in the way that only 80s music can be) and it’s interesting to see Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt when they were young. Sarah Jessica Parker actually gives a surprisingly likable performance here, even if it is often way too obvious that a body double is doing the majority of her dancing. That said, you really can’t get any further away from Carrie Bradshaw than Janey Glenn.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun is a time capsule of the decade in which it was made and that is definitely the main reason to watch it. Until time machines are a reality and we can experience the past firsthand, we’ll just have to keep getting our information from movies like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h6pXPHaWM0