{"id":8230,"date":"2024-11-12T00:21:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8230"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:21:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:21:27","slug":"up-the-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/up-the-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Up the Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Up the Academy <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, bathroom humor, sexual humor, drug use and references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Robert Downey Sr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jeff Rawluk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 6, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Or, as it\u2019s also known, MAD Magazine Presents Up the Academy<\/strong>. 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\u2019s appearances at the beginning and end, from the movie. It\u2019s the only version of Up the Academy<\/strong> that was available until it was released on DVD in 2006. Everything MAD-related was restored.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I really, really wanted to see Up the Academy<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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\u2019s house the following summer (they had cable, I didn\u2019t) and thought it was great. Now you may say it\u2019s because I was 13 and it was one of those forbidden fruit deals, but I still really like it. Yes, it\u2019s corny and very badly made, but it\u2019s also funny as hell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The \u201cplot\u201d (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\u2019t join the family business, the Mafia. Ike (Brown, Dreams Don\u2019t Die) had an affair with his stepmother. Hash (Citera), son of a wealthy sheik, is a petty thief. Oliver (Hutchinson), son of his hometown\u2019s 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\u2019s mean, cruel, sadistic, perverted, sneaky and moronic. The four cadets are later joined by Rodney Vervegaert (Teinowitz), a fat idiot who\u2019s been kicked out of several prep schools for arson (he\u2019s a pyromaniac).<\/p>\n

\u00a0At one point, the guys sneak out to visit Oliver\u2019s 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\u2019t convince Candy to have sex with him. Of course, the boys aren\u2019t going down without a fight. They hatch a plot to get back the photos and bring down Liceman in the process.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Up the Academy<\/strong> 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\u2019 underwear. The school\u2019s older-than-God commandant, Causeway (Wolfe, THX 1138), is extremely flatulent. Naturally, he\u2019s introduced by way of a Patton-like scenario. The school\u2019s 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<\/strong> 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\u2019s warnings about standing out \u201clike a turd in a punch bowl\u201d and a performance by the world\u2019s worst singing group, a quintet called The Landmines, at the school dance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Leibman is one of the funniest things in Up the Academy<\/strong>. His character is a creep, but you can laugh at him because he\u2019s too stupid to know how stupid he is. He may as well have him name put back in the credits since everybody knows he\u2019s in it. Macchio is the only one of the five young actors who went on to bigger things. Actually, that\u2019s not entirely true. Hutchinson is now Hutch Parker, president of 20th<\/sup> 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\u2019s great in Up the Academy<\/strong>. She\u2019s a gifted comic actress in addition to being quite beautiful. BTW, Alfred E. Neuman is also good in the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Up the Academy<\/strong> is haphazardly put-together. Let\u2019s get real, it\u2019s not what anybody would call fine cinema. It\u2019s made for morons and I love that about it. It\u2019s directed by Robert Downey Sr. whose credits include Putney Swope, Greaser\u2019s Palace, Too Much Sun and Hugo Pool. It\u2019s not all that impressive a resume; Up the Academy<\/strong> is one of his better movies. The soundtrack, which includes tunes by Blondie (\u201cOne Way or Another\u201d), Pat Benatar (\u201cWe Live for Love\u201d), The Stooges (\u201cGimme Danger\u201d), Nick Lowe (\u201cHeart of the City\u201d) and, my favorite, \u201cSurrender\u201d by Cheap Trick, is AWESOME! I also liked the two songs by Blow-Up, \u201cKicking Up a Fuss\u201d (opening credits) and \u201cBeat the Devil\u201d (final scene). Up the Academy<\/strong> is one of best underrated, underappreciated teen comedies to the 80s. It\u2019s no Animal House but it works if taken on its own dum-dum terms.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up the Academy (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, bathroom humor, sexual humor, drug use and references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Robert Downey Sr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jeff Rawluk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 6, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ron Leibman, Wendell Brown, Tommy Citera, J. Hutchinson, Ralph Macchio, Harry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-thats-some-funny-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Up-the-Academy-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8429,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230\/revisions\/8429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}