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The Vice Academy series is quite different from other works by Sloane. After Sloane’s half a dozen bizarre and cringe movies in the eighties nearing their peak with Hobgoblins in 1988, Vice Academy marks a major shift in the filmmaker’s career. The Vice Academy series is much more toned down than Sloane’s other works. It is more sexually driven but I didn’t find it particulary compelling.
The Vice Academy series takes a literal approach to its theme. The movie follows an undercover major and a few contracted trainees attempting to bust a prostitution and pornography racket. In simpler terms, it follows a bunch of wannabe cops get the vice squad training. The series does feature a few funny scenes of trainee police academy officers blending attempting to get innocent kids in trouble. Fighting a women’s rights cause is always a lot of tension relieving fun, but ultimately, it was only tolerable for me.
The script is not funny to the slightest, it is filled with cliches and is vague about what it truly embodies. There is certainly a pinch of humor sprinkled throughout, but given the subject matter, the jokes are of basic structure and are at best, painfully unfunny. Some serious issues are heavily touched upon, but personally, I felt those issues were insensitively dealt with in the midst of comedy, and as a result, made the comical attempts in novel incredibly distasteful and out of touch.
The first 20 minutes aren’t very clear at all regarding the course aggressor. I feel like for the most part, our cast happens to be misplaced and thrown in randomly while trying desperate to make sense of the chaos around them.
The screenplay methodologies are somewhat lacking to an extent, the first act is chaotic and doesn’t really set our characters up well, the 2nd act is pretty much just a collection of moments rather than a continuation of the first, and the 3rd act is probably the part of the movie that was the most coherent. At this point, however, it is difficult to get excited by a film that has already irritated me for an hour with women running around in lengerie and some uninteresting, and some rather inappropriate, humor that at the best did not compel me to switch it off.
The dialogue is lacking sophistication, the tone in the pacing of the movie seems to be misplaced. They do not offer any note worthy reward for the time spent, and here comes the spoiler for which I have warned mildly, [The film actually comes to a close, pertinent to the fact that they seem to hint about the sequel in the works. This is such a lazy approach and if you are an audience, you should be prepared for quite disappointing movie endings. Come back and hope for a better ending. Well, I will not come back. I will try to do that, but it will be a challenge]
Aside from an unappealing script, the rest of the films are not so horrible. They are often decent in terms of direction and have an obvious vision in terms of the technique. Out of the cactus-colored gel illumination, I should not have associated Rick Sloane with this picture as the director. To be honest, he was definitely trying to do this tape for the pay and for the sake of the comedy. But, it is of reasoned quality, and certainly a large shift from Sloane’s other works. It truly is a dull endeavor from the conclusion.
The cast did not bring any excitement to the table. There were a few instances of animated turns here and there that did help sell some of the gags, but their efforts were wasted. The actors’ capabilities were not fully utilized and much of the footage consisted of two or three actors standing on a street or a warehouse and reeling out dialogue that could only be described as ‘softcore’. I did not enjoy it.
The cinematography was above-average and there were a few shots taken during the night that were properly color graded, but the continuity was bad in a funny way. The highlight for me was a couple of scenes that had a smoke machine working overtime to add atmosphere, but they did it in places like the living room or the warehouse where smoke was impractical.
I would rate the compositions as fine. There might be a few wobbly bits here and there, but I must say, it just about does the job. The heavy lifting regarding the overall score of this film is mainly attributed to the tone work in the cine and moments where the cine works the most.
I got to admit though that the performances here are pretty dire but at least they are somewhat tolerable because the lines are delivered in the most unbelievable way, with a hearty dosage of cheese and very little else that is endearing about the performance. It gives off the feeling that most of the other members in the cast are simply there to pick up their paycheck and goof about for a couple of months and that’s more or less it. But for the most part, the acting here comes across as rather awkward and bizarre.
The only other thing I can acknowledge saving this film are the soundtracks with, ‘Severe Tyre Damage’ adding some tracks alongside rocky 80’s pop scoring. It’s solid stuff. This certainly isn’t what I would have expected for a film like this, but it is better for it.
All in all? Ughhh… I have definitely seen worse, but there is no question I have seen better. I think that if the film had a more defined vision on how it wanted to present itself tone-wise, and a bit of a cleaner storyline, I would have appreciated it more. Its still has some redeeming qualities, but this is understandably not a must watch and I will most likely not revisit it for a while.
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