Viva la academia

I used to LOVE this movie as a kid but, seeing it again 20+ years later, it actually sucks. Up The Academy might have been ahead of it's time back in 1980, but it has almost nothing to offer today! Movies like Caddyshack and Stripes hold-up much better today than this steaming dogpile. No T&A. No great jokes except for the one-liners we've all heard a million times by now.

I recently bought the DVD in hopes that it would be the gem I remembered it being. Well, I was WAY off! The soundtrack had only 2-3 widely-recognizable hits (not the smash compilation others had mentioned) and the frequent voice-overs were terrible. The only thing that was interesting, to me, was predicting what the character's lines were before they said them. Yep, I watched this movie that much back then!

The only reason I am writing this review is to give my two cents on why this movie should be forgotten, sorry to say. :(

When you have a comedy franchise as massive as Mad magazine, it seems that surely there must be some movie they could get out of it. This is that movie and it ended up being the only movie that ever had the Mad name on it. Actually, it doesn't even count as that. The creators of Mad magazine did in fact have their names removed from this film and have disowned it. I remember reading about this on Cracked.com where it said one of the movie's main jokes is that there's a pedophile. They honestly must not have seen the whole thing as that's barely in the film at all.

The creators admitted that it was influenced by "National Lampoon's Animal House", another movie based on a comedy magazine. At least their magazine didn't last as long. The movie mostly suffers from having really unlikeable characters and dumb jokes. The general guy farted twice and didn't even do it a third time! I've still seen far worse movies and I wish the creators of those ones would disown them too. I just saw no satire or parody factor in this at all. *1/2

I first caught the movie on its first run on HBO in (probably) 1981 and being 15 years old I thought the movie was hilarious. I remember NOT seeing the Alfred E. Neuman depictions shown in the theatrical trailers. When MAD Magazine satired the movie and abruptly halted half way through with apologies from the "usual gang" for lowering themselves to satire such a piece of crap, I just assumed they were poking fun at themselves, which I'm sure they were, but to seriously find them ( and Ron Liebman ) so embarrassed to remove their names from any credits, I was quite surprised. Surely there are many worse movies to be associated with. Watching the movie on video now (at age 32) with the MAD references restored, I still get a kick out of it. And being a Ron Liebman fan (Hot Rock, Where's Poppa?) I think it's his crown jewel of performances (SAY IT AGAAAAIN)

A stale "misfits-in-the-army" saga, which half-heartedly attempts to be both surreal (the foreign subtitles) AND vulgar (the flatulence gags), but just ends up being a mix of many different kinds of humor, none of them followed very successfully. Barbara Bach, the Bond Girl from "The Spy Who Loved Me", has only two or three brief scenes. What a waste! (*1/2)

I remember seeing the ads for this on TV and thinking it looked hilarious but unfortunately I couldn't see it due to the fact I was too young. So like a lot of movies that were denied me at a young age, I made it my mission to see it later on in life. Some of those movies, like, "The Life of Brian" and "Videodrome" were worth waiting for. Unfortunately others, like this one, weren't. And you know it's bad when Mad Magazine, the people that made it, put a large disclaimer in their magazine that they disavowed it. It was so poorly received that I don't think it ever got a proper release to home video and when movies like "Queen Kong" got a proper release, you know this one was destined for the junk pile of history.

There's an.... art to making sophomoric movies and it doesn't involve just putting a whole bunch of stereotypes into a blender and hoping what comes out is good. Take a look at "Animal House" which is an apt comparison as that's what they were going for. It's considered a classic in part to the actors that took part in it but also the direction, the script and the fact that they didn't try to do too much with it. This movie however just seems to want to throw everything they can at the screen and hope that something works.

Four boys are sent to a military academy all for different reasons and shenanigans ensue. There's the barber that just so happens to be blind giving bad haircuts. There's one of the officers that happens to be gay and like young boys. There's the sexy female instructor that teaches them about armaments in very sexual terms. In other words they tried really hard to be "Animal House" but didn't get hat made that movie the success it was.

In short this is a bad movie made to cash in on a more successful movie but without knowing how to do it in the first place.