Well; I’ve made it to part 3 in the ‘Vice Academy’ Franchise and…honestly? theres not a whole lot to say really. In essence this is just a slightly more screwball, slightly more titilating and slightly less coherent redux of ‘Part 2’.

A film that feels almost bored of exploring new ground and instead falls into self referential directoral callbacks to Rick Sloans earlier works (expect similar scene set ups to ‘Hobgoblins’, ‘Blood Theater’ and ‘The Visitants’ to be melded in here with random references to Batman ’66 and early John Waters movies…) It SHOULD in theory be a film that I got on with. But its lack of enthusiasm to actually try and push the series forward just kind of left me flagging a bit.

So the film picks up a few months after the events of Part 2, Linnea Quigley asked for too much money this time- I…I mean…’DiDi’ has moved on from the Vice team to pastures new and in her place her younger, more affordable sister Candy has just graduated into the force and is looking to cut her teeth after her time in the Academy. Cue Candy basically doing a similar set of patter to the opening half of Vice Academy 2…just sans Holly.

Holly meanwhile is undercover in a womens prison and hating every minute of it. When a new inmate called Melanie springs a jailbreak she takes with her a crew of inmates and swears vengence on the local authoraties. Leading the Vice Squad ultimately to pull Holly out of her undercover duties to team up with Candy in…err…well…the film isnt entirely sure. They keep saying they need to catch Melanie and her gang and put them back behind bars…but the vast majority of the films runtime (up until the final 10 minutes or so) is just Holly and Candy taking part in varying degrees of risque ‘sitcom’ style shenanigans intercut with Melanie and the team gurning and swearing there absolute vegence on the city.

As you can imagine its boobs, bums, gun battles and plinky plonky synth music out the wazoo from minute 2 till closing credits.

And…yeah, there isnt much to say. Realistically this feels like Rick Sloan had a lot of potential ‘skits’ that he couldnt quite fit into ‘Vice Academy Part 2’ so he just pulled them out of the garbage, finnessed them and wove a thread through the leftovers creating this movie. It doesnt feel any better paced, any better scripted and the dialogue feels even more stilted and strange than before.

Its not an unpleasent watch really, it just…isnt anything new. they retread a lot of old ground from the previous movie, the humour isnt particularly built on or developed from the last film. and because the plot is even less present here, it just kind of feels like your watching an attempt at a reconstruction of a film that the cast and crew can only vaguely remember.

Direction and cine equally feel under developed with a lot of the better scene structurings being self referential pastiches or literal copy/paste lifts from the directors earlier films. Again, its not BAD perse…its just not anything we didnt get in the last two movies, and i’d had quite my fill of this type of thing WITH the last two movies…So I just kind of found myself asking what the point of this entry was for most of the runtime.

The performances are a bit stiffer than the last film, Elizabeth Kaitan is a fine enough addition to the cast, but the air head gags by this point are worn through to the point of exhaustion and…while shes a change of pace…she’s no Linnea Quigley here. The rest of the cast seem largely on auto pilot. Not in an unpleasent way, but just in a way that makes you acknowledge that this is absolutely just a paycheque gig to them and nothing else…something to help fill a couple weeks in a scheduling diary and to keep their management happy.

The quick caption summary for ‘Vice Academy Part 3’ from me is ‘Basically just Vice Academy 2, but less coherent and less fun’. With the previous two films I could actually see myself revisiting them with a heavy whiskey. But this one? I dont really see the point. Its just a less good take of the last film…and if I OWN the last film…why would I bother with this?

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/vice-academy-part-3/