At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

I have a terrible confession – I absolutely adore the Police Academy movies (well, at least the first four). If you were a child in the 80s, the Police Academy movies were unavoidable (I rented them multiple times from the video store and watched them whenever they aired on television).     Police Academy 4 was my favorite out of the lot, for reasons that I will get into later.   In his movie guide, Leonard Maltin gives the first movie a (fair) two and a half star review, but gives a BOMB rating to the rest of the   series (with the exception of the one and half star rating he gives to Police Academy 3) .   I don’t want to harp on Maltin too badly here (as I have in the past) because his negative reviews are not exactly out of line.   The problem I have with four (sometime five) star rating system is that, while it’s an apt barometer when it comes to the quality of movies, it leaves very little room in terms of actual film analysis for a movie (yes, even the Police Academy movies ar