Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)

User Rating:

2.5/10   

Director:

Alan Metter

Writers (WGA):

Neal Israel (characters) &
Pat Proft (characters) ...

Release Date:

26 August 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime

Tagline:

Kicking buttski. Making you laughski. The Academy is backski!

Plot:

The Russian government hires the veterans of the Police Academy to help deal with the Mafia.

Plot Keywords:

Police | Mafia | Sergeant | Police Academy | Captain

Cast

George Gaynes	...	Cmndt. Eric Lassard
Michael Winslow	...	Sgt. Larvelle Jones
David Graf	...	Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry
Leslie Easterbrook	...	Capt. Debbie Callahan
G.W. Bailey	...	Captain Harris
Christopher Lee	...	Cmndt. Alexandrei Nikolaivich Rakov
Ron Perlman	...	Konstantine Konali
Claire Forlani	...	Katrina
Charlie Schlatter	...	Cadet Kyle Connors
Richard Israel	...	Adam Sharp
Gregg Berger	...	Lt. Talinsky
Vladimir Dolinsky	...	Bellboy
Pamela Guest	...	Anchorwoman
Stuart Nisbet	...	Anchorman (as Stuart Nissbet)
David St. James	...	News director

Also Known As:

Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow (USA) (alternative title)

MPAA:

Rated PG for comic sensuality.

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Germany:6 | Iceland:L | Finland:K-7 (DVD rating) | Netherlands:6 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-8 | Norway:11 | Singapore:PG | Spain:T | Sweden:11 | UK:PG | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Moscow, Russia

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Michael Winslow's bike scene caused a bit of controversy as he was unknowingly transmitting his funny noises through a secure military channel. When confronted with the rightful authorities, everything was cleared up when they recognized Winslow from his previous movies.

Goofs:

Continuity: During the climactic chase scene, the skyline changes repeatedly from cloudy to clear in every other shot.

Quotes:

Captain Thaddeus Harris: Not exactly a four star hotel, is it?
Lieutenant Talinsky: Well, we spend our police budget on fighting criminals, not on pampering out of town visitors.
Captain Thaddeus Harris: It was your government that brought us here!
Lieutenant Talinsky: They also bring in monkeys for zoo, but we don't put them in four star hotel either!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Top Gear: (2007-11-18)" (2007)

Soundtrack:

Am I Blue?

A serious drama about mental illness

Imagine having your testicles ripped off by a Grizzly and you're half way to appreciating how painful an experience this movie is. Whatever you thought about the previous Police Academy movies (and I'm not particularly fond of any of them) they at least fitted in to the genre of comedy. This one creates it's own sub-genre: the anti-comedy. There's not a single joke in the entire film that makes any sense, and this is partly due to the fact that the script reads as though it was translated from English into Russian and then back again. And I'm not trying to insult the Russians. They get a hard enough time in the movie. If the makers of this film are to be believed, the Russian people are a humourless bunch, and so you imagine that the producers thought that a film with absolutely no humour in it would go down a storm with Moscow audiences. Now, I've never seen a Russian comedy, but I think it's safe to bet that they're better than this.

In one scene, a character batters a hole in a hotel room door using an ice bucket stuck to his head. I don't know why, and it's typical of this film that you're never quite sure what it is you're supposed to be laughing at. The jokes just rattle on and on like this making no sense whatsoever.

If you were to convince yourself that what you were actually watching was a serious drama about the mental illness of a high-ranking police officer lost in Moscow, you might get some perverse pleasure out of this. On the video packet, though, the distributors assure us that it's a comedy, so you can't even give the film the benefit of the doubt.

It's interesting to note that after the Police Academy team's adventure in Moscow, the authorities saw fit to let them back into their own country, where they went on to make Police Academy : The Series which is, believe it or not, even worse than this.

Best to watch this drunk. And with the television switched off.