I've been a fan of the Police Academy movies for as long as I can remember and watched them whenever they appeared on TV. I've never actively gone out of my way to watch them however, so I had no idea which movie was which. I finally decided to watch through them all and felt like sharing my thoughts. For your information, the boxset I own only contains the movies, so this doesn't talk about the two TV shows that apparently exist. Let's start with a synopsis of each movie.

The first movie is of course Police Academy, in which a bunch of misfits? (Mahoney, Jones, Tackleberry, Hightower, Hooks, and more) join the titular academy, helmed by Commandant Eric Lassard. We follow them on their journey to becoming fully fledged officers of the law.

In Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, the new officers have been called in to help a station in trouble, where they must attempt to stop Zed and his gang from terrorizing the city, all the while Mauser is trying to sabotage for them.

In Police Academy 3: Back In Training, our cast of characters is about to expand as Zed, Sweetchuck, and others join the academy. This time, the original class are among the teachers. The new class must succeed, or else the academy could be shut down.

For Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol, Commandant Lassard has come up with a new initiative, in which a group of citizens work together with the police to help report crimes. How could this possibly go wrong?

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach sees Commandant Lassard get honored as police of the decade, which takes him and the gang to Miami where he'll accept this award. Meanwhile, a band of thieves have stolen some highly valuable diamonds. These have managed to come come in the Commandant's possesion, and now they must find a way to get them back.

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege sees the gang on another mission. A mysterious set of robberies have been happening around town, all executed perfectly. For this to happen, they seem to get information from within the force, but who could be their informant?

The seventh movie, Police Academy: Mission To Moscow, once again has our protagonists travel somewhere, this time to Russia where they'll investigate the creator of a suspicious hit game.

With that out of the way, a bit on the structure of the movies. Watching them, I felt that 1 through 4 (maybe with the exception of 2) had a structure of "location, situation, what do?": Our characters are at a location, say a gym; Here our characters will do something, say train on various manuevers; What fun things can happen with this premise? Then you get some fun scenarios out of this, like Michael Winslow doing his "kung fu master" bit, Sweetchuck getting defeated by an old lady, or all the times the students fawn over Callahan. Doesn't lend itself well to an involved story, but works great for a comedy like these.

5 through 7 (and maybe 2) on the other hand felt more story focused, as they didn't seem to follow the structure described above. More focus was given to the villains, taking time away from the protagonists. While I enjoyed 6, both 5 and 7 were "location movies" at the same time. 5 was a trip to Florida and there were therefore a lot of shots you typically see in movies sponsored by resorts: activities you can do there. For example, a lot of the shots featured during the beach scene were essentially tourists enjoying the beach; felt like there weren't a ton of jokes there. Same goes for the the limbo scene, not a whole lot of jokes. As for 7, it taking place in Russia meant they had to focus on its culture, like the circus and the family. Both of these movies have redeemable qualities (I liked 5's ending section and Lassard's time wih the Russian family in 7 was fun), but don't have the same quality as the others, especially as both introduce a new straight man to replace the one who left.

All of the movies are fun to some degree, so I recommend them all... except for 7. Mission to Moscow is just a boring movie. I felt that many jokes didn't very well, and its cast being what it was didn't help. Regarding the cast, essentially half the cast is gone from this entry. Only Commandant Lassard, Jones, Tackleberry, Callahan, and Harris return, so with half the character archetypes gone it feels rather empty, and with no character for Harris to bounce off of it feels like everyone is being extra mean to him. It's just not up to par.

Regarding the cast, I feel they had a retention problem. 1 through 4 felt like they built up the cast: 1 introduced everyone, 2 kept most of them and put them on a mission, 3 introduced new cadets including characters from 2, and 4 kept some while introducing more. Starting with 5, the focus was solely on the main cast, as there were no new cadets and basically everyone introduced after the first movie were gone. Regarding removed characters, since Mahoney didn't return for 5, they felt the need to replace him with a new straight man, this being Nick Lassard, the Commandant's nephew. He was fine, but he was also replaced after the sixth movie, where a cadet named Connors takes the straight man role. Instead of replacing Mahoney (twice), I feel like they maybe should've given the straight man role to Callahan. In a world of absurd characters, I feel she was the least absurd of the ones remaining, so she could've taken over the role and removed the need to introduce new characters. Of course, if you want the straight man to be a man with a love interest who's a woman, the straight man being a woman doesn't work.

Anyway, go watch them if you want. Prepare for the eight movie's release, whenever that is. Apparently it was announced back in 2003? Should be out soon, then.