Up the Academy (1980) Warner Bros./Comedy RT: 87 minutes Rated R (language, bathroom humor, sexual humor, drug use and references) Director: Robert Downey Sr. Screenplay: Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses Music: Jeff Rawluk Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr. Release date: June 6, 1980 (US) Cast: Ron Leibman, Wendell Brown, Tommy Citera, J. Hutchinson, Ralph Macchio, Harry Teinowitz, Tom Poston, Ian Wolfe, Antonio Fargas, Stacey Nelkin, Barbara Bach, Leonard Frey, Luke Andreas, Candy Ann Brown, King Coleman, Rosalie Citera, Yvonne Francis, James G. Robertson, Rosemary Eliot, Louis Zorich. Box Office: N/A
Rating: *** ½
Or, as it’s also known, MAD Magazine Presents Up the Academy. It was their attempt to replicate the success National Lampoon had with Animal House two years earlier. It failed miserably. Not only did it tank at the box office, lead actor Ron Leibman (The Super Cops) asked that his name be removed from the credits and all promotional materials. Then MAD publisher William M. Gaines completely disowned it. He paid $30,000 to Warner Bros. to remove all references to MAD, including Alfred E. Neuman’s appearances at the beginning and end, from the movie. It’s the only version of Up the Academy that was available until it was released on DVD in 2006. Everything MAD-related was restored.
I really, really wanted to see Up the Academy when it came out in 1980. I was an avid reader of MAD and wanted to see their first (and only) movie in the worst way. As usual, I couldn’t get around the parental R-rated movie ban. Many of my sixth grade classmates were in the exact same boat. I watched it at a friend’s house the following summer (they had cable, I didn’t) and thought it was great. Now you may say it’s because I was 13 and it was one of those forbidden fruit deals, but I still really like it. Yes, it’s corny and very badly made, but it’s also funny as hell.
The “plot” (such as it is) is pretty much the same as anything from the Animal House/Police Academy playbook of the early 80s. Four misfits are sent to the Sheldon R. Weinberg Military Academy for different reasons. Chooch (Macchio in his film debut) won’t join the family business, the Mafia. Ike (Brown, Dreams Don’t Die) had an affair with his stepmother. Hash (Citera), son of a wealthy sheik, is a petty thief. Oliver (Hutchinson), son of his hometown’s mayor, got his girlfriend pregnant during an election year. Their chief nemesis at Weinberg is Major Vaughan Liceman (Leibman), a hard-ass disciplinarian whose arrival is typically heralded by a sudden drop in air temperature. He’s mean, cruel, sadistic, perverted, sneaky and moronic. The four cadets are later joined by Rodney Vervegaert (Teinowitz), a fat idiot who’s been kicked out of several prep schools for arson (he’s a pyromaniac).
At one point, the guys sneak out to visit Oliver’s girlfriend Candy (Nelkin, Get Crazy) at a nearby girls military school (Mildred S. Butch, ha ha). Naturally, Liceman catches them. In fact, he was onto them from the start and has incriminating pictures of Oliver having sex with his girlfriend that he threatens to make public (his dad will lose the election) if he doesn’t convince Candy to have sex with him. Of course, the boys aren’t going down without a fight. They hatch a plot to get back the photos and bring down Liceman in the process.
Up the Academy has something to offend absolutely everybody: blacks, Italians, Arabs, women, gays, lesbians, racist rednecks, etc. One officer, Sisson (Poston, Mork & Mindy), is a limp-wristed gay with a thing for young boys’ underwear. The school’s older-than-God commandant, Causeway (Wolfe, THX 1138), is extremely flatulent. Naturally, he’s introduced by way of a Patton-like scenario. The school’s weapons instructor, Bliss (Bach, Caveman), is a busty babe the boys leer at the whole time. Hey guys, her eyes are a little higher up! Up the Academy is cheerfully offensive, rude, gross and mindless. I laughed far more than I should have. The high points include pig testicles being served for lunch, Liceman’s warnings about standing out “like a turd in a punch bowl” and a performance by the world’s worst singing group, a quintet called The Landmines, at the school dance.
Leibman is one of the funniest things in Up the Academy. His character is a creep, but you can laugh at him because he’s too stupid to know how stupid he is. He may as well have him name put back in the credits since everybody knows he’s in it. Macchio is the only one of the five young actors who went on to bigger things. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Hutchinson is now Hutch Parker, president of 20th Century Fox and producer of box office hits like Logan and the last two X-Men movies. I am a big fan of Ms. Nelkin. I always felt she should have had a huge career like fellow teen stars Brooke Shields and Phoebe Cates. She’s great in Up the Academy. She’s a gifted comic actress in addition to being quite beautiful. BTW, Alfred E. Neuman is also good in the movie.
Up the Academy is haphazardly put-together. Let’s get real, it’s not what anybody would call fine cinema. It’s made for morons and I love that about it. It’s directed by Robert Downey Sr. whose credits include Putney Swope, Greaser’s Palace, Too Much Sun and Hugo Pool. It’s not all that impressive a resume; Up the Academy is one of his better movies. The soundtrack, which includes tunes by Blondie (“One Way or Another”), Pat Benatar (“We Live for Love”), The Stooges (“Gimme Danger”), Nick Lowe (“Heart of the City”) and, my favorite, “Surrender” by Cheap Trick, is AWESOME! I also liked the two songs by Blow-Up, “Kicking Up a Fuss” (opening credits) and “Beat the Devil” (final scene). Up the Academy is one of best underrated, underappreciated teen comedies to the 80s. It’s no Animal House but it works if taken on its own dum-dum terms.
