Police Academy 5 : Débarquement à Miami Beach

"Assignment: Miami Beach" is the first one in the franchise that doesn't have Steve Guttenberg, and I've got mixed feelings about that. In one way it's sort of a blessing, because we can finally spend some quality time with Lassard in this one. George Gaynes has always been the best actor of any installment's cast, so it's nice to see a sequel where everything revolves around him. Granted, all he really gets to do is have people fall over a bunch of times, but somehow he still makes it work. On the other hand, the movie clearly misses a decent "straight man" to counterbalance all the oddballs. I guess that was new guy Matt McCoy's task, but given that the guy has no screen presence whatsoever and barely made the final cut it doesn't quite work. Overall though, I didn't hate this. I mean, they do the same seven or eight bits they do in all the other ones, but here they do them on a different location! Michael Winslow does his Bruce Lee schtick for the fifth time in five movies, but now on a different location! I was sorta surprised Miami didn't have a Blue Oyster Bar, to be honest. "Police Academy 5" is not the greatest movie you'll ever see, but it'll give you about what you would expect.

Fifth Police Academy is about as good as the fourth one, if not a little bit better. It takes a new twist when the main characters go to a trip to Miami. It's a fresh new take, with new jokes on the plane and on a beach etc. Some scenes look like the movie makers just went to holiday to have fun and just shoot whatever; there are some completely random scenes like a limbo dance. It isn't a very solid film but at least it has a fun mood. Towards the end there is a boat chase scene, which is a bit long but it's maybe better than that in the third film.

Overall I'd say this is still a watchable film for fans, but it's as far as you need to go with Police Academy.

For what it's worth, it's the best of the films without Steve Guttenberg. That's faint praise, but the series was running mostly on his charm and likeability.

All non-Guttenberg factors being equal, in a lot of ways it's a (slight) improvement over the fourth film. The overall plot isn't exceptionally outlandish; befuddled jewel thieves is a more realistic setup than a citizens' police force or the mayor of the city orchestrating a crime wave. The cast are all game, and George Gaynes is clearly having a ball.

I wouldn't actually spend a lot of money on the film, but if it's in TV some lazy Saturday, there are worst ways to kill a few hours.

The first three police academies were very good silly comedy, they had some great moments were great underdog stories and made you laugh quite a bit, at least me, but by the previous one it just ran out of steam, there was nothing left in the whole Police Academy genre. This one finds a bunch more character combined with out old friends to go to Miami Beach for a convention. Was the worst of the original six. I would not recommend seeing it, although the next one wasn't all that bad.

Steve Guttenberg being out of the series definitely made a difference and a lot of the gimmicks that made the original work were not present in this one. Part of the problem is that it went from being raucous adult comedy to a silly kid's comedy. None of the dirty humor is there anymore and that is sad. Stick with the first three those are very funny.

Miami Vice is an obvious influence here ... and it is nice that we do not get another "let's recruit" new cops and train them movie ... even though this is called Police Academy and that is what that would mean now isn't it? Don't mind that ... but as you could already tell from the previous one, spewing those out with such a frantic pace you could tell, new ideas where sparse.

Where to go and what to do? Maybe that was the reason one of the main guys who got famous with the series got out and did not include himself in this part: Steve Guttenberg. He might have been shooting another movie too, not sure what the reasons where. We get people from previous movies though ... many of them. Especially our favorite guys to hate ... who have a tough job as I already said in the previous movies review.

The scenes on the Miami beach are just plain ridiculous and really seem like sketch comedy with no real value ... other than to fill the run time of the movie and add a gag per minute "score". Even in the previous one where they went to a gay bar (again) for example, you may wonder something that is being asked here: why do I keep falling for these? Because it is a comedy would be the right answer I reckon ... anyway, maybe you care, maybe you don't ... but for a completist, I had to watch them ... and I will revisit the other remaining two movies too ... someday soon.