A group of Police Academy graduates are sent to train a group of newly recruited civilian officers. The original Police Academy cast reprise their roles in the film. Capt. Harris, not seen since the first installment, returns as the film's nemesis. In Police Academy 2 and 3, Capt./Commandant Mauser (played by Art Metrano) filled that role, but Metrano asked to be replaced for the remainder of the series after filming number 3. This was the last Police Academy film to feature Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney.
This film also stars a young David Spade in his feature film debut, as well as featuring a brief appearance from pro skateboarder Tony Hawk as Spade's double in a skateboarding scene.[2] Despite the commercial success, the sequel was panned by film critics.
Plot
Commandant Eric Lassard decides the police force is overworked and understaffed, so he comes up with the idea of recruiting civilian volunteers to work side by side with his officers in a program called "Citizens On Patrol" (COP).
Carey Mahoney and his friends Moses Hightower, Larvell Jones, Eugene Tackleberry, Zed, Sweetchuck, Laverne Hooks, and Debbie Callahan are in charge of training the civilians. The civilians include the enormous Tommy "House" Conklin (who Hightower used to babysit), gung-ho senior citizen Lois Feldman, Tackleberry's own father-in-law, and skateboarding delinquents Kyle and Arnie. The latter pair were caught by Capt. Harris, and the judge was about to throw the book at them until Mahoney speaks to the judge to let Arnie and Kyle join the COP program as alternative punishment. The judge agrees, and the boys are joined by their attorney, Butterworth.
Believing "the concept of citizens doing police work is asinine", Harris is determined to see the COP program fail and take over Lassard's job at the academy. When Lassard leaves on an overseas conference, Harris, and his right-hand man Lt. Proctor, are put in charge of the academy and Harris immediately plots to make the COP volunteers quit and leave police work to officers.
The volunteers, however, do well in their training. Mrs. Feldman excels in firing Tackleberry's .44 Magnum, and they bond amicably (she reminds him of his mother). In training in water safety and drowning victim rescue, Zed rescues a cadet and gains a love interest, a reporter/photographer Laura, who has come to view Lassard's COP program and becomes attracted to Zed. Unfortunately, Harris ruins the moment, insulting them both and inspiring Zed to replace Harris' deodorant with mace, which burns his armpits. Despite pranks pulled on him during training, Harris is still determined to make the Citizens on Patrol program fail.
Jones learns that volunteers House, Kyle, and Arnie feel ready to go out and arrest criminals, so he, Mahoney, Hightower, and Tackleberry prank the boys, locking them in a prisoner transport van with Hightower, who is posing as a Voodoo practitioner who reanimates his "dead" brother (Tackleberry), as a Jason Voorhees-esque maniac with a chainsaw to make them take training more seriously. Later, after Captain Harris yells at Zed again, calling him a disgrace, Laura comforts him, saying she thinks he is perfect.
After COP volunteers accidentally foil an undercover police sting, the program is suspended, much to Harris' delight. Mahoney believes he did it on purpose to shut down the COP program, paying him back by putting superglue on the mouthpiece of Harris' bullhorn, semi-permanently sticking the mouth guard to its rims. Sometime later, Harris gives some prominent citizens a tour of his precinct when Proctor is tricked into releasing every inmate at the precinct 19 jail, including a team of ninjas, and special guest Randall "Tex" Cobb. After the criminals imprison Harris and his guests, they escape into the street, only to run into Mrs. Feldman, who immediately informs the Lassard academy.
When Lassard's officers hear of the jailbreak, COP volunteers are dispatched with the regular officers to catch the escaped felons. After stopping a robbery, a ship hijacking and a high-speed air balloon chase, the dirtbags are all recaptured. Meanwhile, House, Kyle, Arnie, and Butterworth save Harris and Proctor from drowning in the river after the latters' attempt (and failure) to participate in the chase, and Zed impresses his girlfriend Laura by saving Sweetchuck's life after they both fall out of a plane in mid-air. Several of the police chiefs who witness Lassard's program in action congratulate and compliment him on the program and his officers, much to Harris' dismay.
The film debuted at number one in the United States weekend box office[3] and would go on to gross a total of $28,061,343.[4] It grossed $76,819,000 worldwide.[1]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 0% of 19 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 2.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Utterly, completely, thoroughly and astonishingly unfunny, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol sends a once-innocuous franchise plummeting to agonizing new depths."[5]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 26 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B−.[7]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote: "The Police Academy series seems to shoot for an ever younger crowd. The optimum viewer for Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol would be a 10-year-old boy. Even better, it would be a whole pack of them. That's not to say the film isn't funny; it means only that the sense of humor being addressed is very specific. Stay away if drawing room farce is what you're after."[8]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "What’s so amazing about the Police Academy movies is that they keep being made even though they stopped being funny after the hilarious original. We’re now up to No. 4, and the most you can say for it is that it is the teeniest bit better, not quite so crass as the last two. [...] There might have been some comic possibilities in this, but writer Gene Quintano strays widely from the premise to toss out, hit-and-miss fashion, a series of pranks involving much slapstick humor and culminating in some aerial tomfoolery involving hot-air balloons and a pair of ancient biplanes. Unfortunately, the film never takes flight itself."[9]
