After a string of some of the strangest and cheesiest movies to ever grace the 80’s, peaking with ‘Hobgoblins’ in 1988. Vice Academy is a definite change of pace in the career of Rick Sloane. A much more toned down picture that dials back the ‘zany’ otherworldly humour of the likes of ‘The Visitants’ and ‘Blood Theater’ in exchange for a much more muted and sexually driven experience that I personally felt wasnt particularly confident in it’s execution.

Quite literally the plot follows a group of ‘hoping to be’ cops as they work through their training to get into the Vice squad. This translates to a few scenes of ‘Police Academy-esq’ slapstick gags about how inexperienced cops can get up to shenanigans while training. But the main focus follows our group of trainees attempting to bust an illegal prostituation and pornography racket. Which has the potential to be quite good fun, but it never quite breaks above ‘tolerable’ for me.

The scripts more groanworthy than anything else, it’s cheesy, but lacking a clear vision as to exactly what this thing wants to be. It definitely has a tongue in cheek attitude to its subject, but the comedy is incredibly basic and really quite groanworthy for the most part, theres some serious elements that get played on (sexual assault, drug abuse etc) but those elements, for me at least, landed incredibly tone deaf in the face of the comedy, and made the comedy itself feel incredibly glib as a result.

We dont really get a lead aggressor in this till the final 20 minutes. which means a lot of the script is just our cast kind of bumbling in and out of CER-AZY situations that dont really add up to a coherent narrative.

The act structures a bit of a mess, the opening act is inconsistent and doesnt really introduce our characters in a memorable or notable way, the 2nd act is really more a series of situations than a developing of the opening, and the 3rd act is probably the most coherent part of the movie. But by this point it’s hard to be enthused by a movie thats wasted over an hour of my time on women running around in lengerie and bland (and sometimes quite questionable) humour that at best didnt make me want to turn it off.

The dialogues quite poor quality, the tone and pacing are off, theres no real payoff worth the time put in and VERY mild spoilers here but [The film ends basically admitting they’re already working on a sequel, which feels like a very lazy way to tell your audience that you couldnt be bothered to end your movie properly, so come back and see if things get better…I will struggle to do that]

Outside of a lacklustre script, the rest of the films actually not too bad, the directions pretty decent for the most part, it has a pretty clear vision on a technical level, though outside of a few shots with coloured gel lighting I wouldnt have linked Rick Sloane to this picture as a director. I really get the feeling he was doing this film for the paycheck and tape quite honestly. its technically sound enough, but a HUGE departure from Sloanes other work and a quite drab affair when all is said and done.

Direction of the cast is kind of flat too, Theres a few animated turns here and there which DOES help sell *some* of the gags a bit more than they might have in lesser hands. But theres just not a whole lot going on here in terms of getting the best out of the cast. a lot of the shots are just locked off scenes of 2-3 actors stood in place on a street or warehouse reeling out dialogue in such a way that borders on ‘softcore’ level standards…it’s not a great experience.

The cine again is fine enough, there a few shots that do experiment a bit more than others, colour is used fairly effectively on the night shots, The continuity is awful in the best way imaginable (my particular highlight being some shots having a smoke machine pumping smoke into the shot for ‘atmosphere’ but its done in situations that smoke being present simply wouldnt exist…like in a warehouse or someones living room.

Compositions are largely fine, theres a couple of wobbly bits here and there, but again it just about does the job. Being honest its the cine and moments where the tone work thats made up the bulk of my score for this thing.

Performances are pretty dire, but at least they’re somewhat tolerable. lines are delivered in the most unbelievable way with a hearty dose of cheese and very little else endearing the performances. You get the feeling from most of the cast that they’re basically there to collect their paycheck and goof about for a couple of months and thats about it. But for the most part the acting here comes across as forced, awkward and just plain weird.

The soundtracks probably the only other thing going for this film, with ‘severe tyre damage’ providing some tracks alongside a rocky and 80s poppy scoring. its solid. Not what i’d have expected for a film like this, but definitely better for it.

All in all?…Ughhhh…I’ve seen far worse, but i’ve absolutely seen better. I think had the film had a bit of a cleaner storyline and clearer vision on how it wanted to present itself tonally, i’d have probably got on with it better. As it stands, it has its moments here and there. But this is absolutely not an essential watch, and probably not one I’ll be back to for a while.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/vice-academy/