Police Academy (franchise)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Police Academy is a long-running series of comedy films, the first six of which were made in the 1980s. The seventh and to date last installment, Mission to Moscow, was released in 1994.
The series opened with Police Academy (1984) which started with the premise that a new mayor had announced a policy requiring the police department to accept all willing recruits. The movie followed a group of misfit recruits in their attempts to prove themselves capable of being police officers. The main character, Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), was a repeat offender who was forced to join the police academy as punishment.
In general, all of the movies and television shows depended on low-brow humor, usually based on simple characterizations and physical comedy. As with many similar movies, the theme was a group of underdogs struggling to prove themselves while various stereotyped authority figures tried to suppress them. The sequels have not been well received by some critics over the years.
The first film grossed $81.2 million in North America, with the following films earning $150 million in total.
