It is somehow fitting that someone with such a snigger inducing surname as Bonerz should end up directing a Police Academy movie. It is also not surprising that this is funnier than almost anything contained within the body of the movie. A member of the cult comedy troupe The Committee, Bonerz finds some “clever” spins on the tired material — at one point during a high speed, as the gang rapidly approach a fresh fruit kart, one of the characters shouts “Look out for Gene and Roger’s fruit stand!”, a reference to film critics Siskel and Ebert — but this is really just a photocopy of elements from all the previous episodes.
Much of the story’s groundwork is laid at the feat of Hightower, surely one of cinema’s most one dimensional characters, and the rest of the troupe play out their regular traits with little feeling for anything else — rarely has so much verbal or physical comedy been so obvious and ill conceived. Kenneth Mars plays it relatively straight as the Mayor who turns out to be the criminal mastermind (its obvious from frame one), the puppetmaster for 3 bumbling crooks who are as inept and unfiunny as the cops.
If you were being generous, you might say that there is a nice feeling around a likeable ensemble going their familiar paces and that Michael Winslow’s Jones’ sound effects schtick, especially when he is doing his dubbed Bruce Lee routine, can raise a smile. But really, this is probably worse than you’d expect, even from a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel.