A shot in the feet: this film marks, for me, the decline of the franchise.
In the fifth film in the “Police Academy” franchise, we follow the characters that everyone already knows on a trip to Miami for a national police convention where veteran Commander Lassard, about to retire and leave the command of the academy, will be rewarded. The script is decent enough, but we can't ignore that, after four films, the comic material is worn out and doesn't make us laugh like it used to. The production's solution was to change location, which was not as effective as one might think: in other films we had already had lots of beach jokes.
The film retains many familiar faces from everyone who has seen the previous films. However, it was unable to bring together the entire cast, not counting Steve Guttenberg, Tim Kazurinsky and Bob Goldthwait, actors who chose not to be part of this project and who had their relevance (especially Guttenberg) in the previous films. As a direct consequence, the film pays more attention to actors who had remained in the shadows, such as Bubba Smith, who performs well here. Michael Winslow, Leslie Easterbrook, George Graf and Marion Ramsey are also present in this film, but they limit themselves to doing more than they had before, and their collaboration is nothing new. George Gaynes also has more protagonism here, and the actor exploited it very well, but it is the duo formed by Lance Kinsey and G. W. Bailey that makes us laugh and steals all the attention thanks to their mischief. Matt McCoy was particularly weak and doesn't deserve to continue in the franchise.
Technically, the film retains many aspects of the previous films in the franchise, such as the costumes, cinematography and effects. It takes advantage of the aerial scenes and landscapes of Miami, with its hotels and wetlands, but I got the feeling that the location was chosen to allow as many girls in bikinis as possible. The settings are decent, although sometimes there are problems (that plane door that is easily ripped off and proves to be light is, of course, fake). The film is not long, wastes no time and was well edited, but the final scene in the swamp is disappointing: I think it was the third time that a “Police Academy” film ended with a random chase, and what was done here it is virtually a copy of a similar scene in another film in the franchise.
