Up the Academy

Okay, go back almost 40 years and I would say this was hilarious, but we all mature into adulthood, and this movie sunk into the abyss yet not totally wrecked.

We meet The Karate Kid (Ralph Macchio) for the first time here, but the rest of the cast...except Ron Leibman, Stacey Nelkin, Tom Poston, and Ian Wolfe...have all vanished from existence, or Planet Hollywood. So that must have been the reason why the movie is so unfunny today. Teenage sexual angst just doesn't turn me on, slightly worth a ha! anymore. Now I know too why Leibman excised his name from the credits...he "stood out like a turd in a punchbowl"! - do you blame him?.

Again, rack this as one of the funny ones that went unfunny over age and time.

I first caught the movie on its first run on HBO in (probably) 1981 and being 15 years old I thought the movie was hilarious. I remember NOT seeing the Alfred E. Neuman depictions shown in the theatrical trailers. When MAD Magazine satired the movie and abruptly halted half way through with apologies from the "usual gang" for lowering themselves to satire such a piece of crap, I just assumed they were poking fun at themselves, which I'm sure they were, but to seriously find them ( and Ron Liebman ) so embarrassed to remove their names from any credits, I was quite surprised. Surely there are many worse movies to be associated with. Watching the movie on video now (at age 32) with the MAD references restored, I still get a kick out of it. And being a Ron Liebman fan (Hot Rock, Where's Poppa?) I think it's his crown jewel of performances (SAY IT AGAAAAIN)

A stale "misfits-in-the-army" saga, which half-heartedly attempts to be both surreal (the foreign subtitles) AND vulgar (the flatulence gags), but just ends up being a mix of many different kinds of humor, none of them followed very successfully. Barbara Bach, the Bond Girl from "The Spy Who Loved Me", has only two or three brief scenes. What a waste! (*1/2)

This is an early "gross-out" movie, where most of the comedy comes from kids going through puberty. It is kind of a teenager soft-core porno spoof without sex or nudity. It is a bit offensive and a bit gratuitous, but not that much to be upset or satisfied with it.

I liked the irrelevance of it. It doesn't bother to attack the idea of a military academy, but just treats it as an absurdity from the beginning. I like the fact that it doesn't have any kind of sentimental development where the kids learn to appreciate their school at the end.

Unfortunately, the plot is pretty mindless with four diverse students defending themselves against a rather bullying and vicious militaristic instructor (Ron Leibman). The best moments are just absurd, fast gags that are justpointless and silly. For example, Barbara Bach wears a loose fitting shirt that almost shows her nipples as she instructs students in handling military weapons. We never learn why she would want to turn on her male students in this way, but we do see the students panting and there is the suggestion that they are masturbating. Obviously, this is a male fantasy with little possibility of ever happening in reality.

I think it is sad that the film was so poorly received that it effectively ended Robert Downey Senior's feature film-making career. He does direct with a carefree, fun style and makes the best out of a mediocre script. A film he did about a dozen years after this, "Hugo Pool" is much better and worth seeing.

I used to LOVE this movie as a kid but, seeing it again 20+ years later, it actually sucks. Up The Academy might have been ahead of it's time back in 1980, but it has almost nothing to offer today! Movies like Caddyshack and Stripes hold-up much better today than this steaming dogpile. No T&A. No great jokes except for the one-liners we've all heard a million times by now.

I recently bought the DVD in hopes that it would be the gem I remembered it being. Well, I was WAY off! The soundtrack had only 2-3 widely-recognizable hits (not the smash compilation others had mentioned) and the frequent voice-overs were terrible. The only thing that was interesting, to me, was predicting what the character's lines were before they said them. Yep, I watched this movie that much back then!

The only reason I am writing this review is to give my two cents on why this movie should be forgotten, sorry to say. :(