Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Featurette-Mistaken Identity: Case Re-Opened Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	86:05
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Alan Myerson
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Bubba Smith David Graf Michael Winslow Leslie Easterbrook Marion Ramsey Janet Jones Lance Kinsey Matt McCoy G.W. Bailey George Gaynes Rene Auberjonois George R. Robertson Tab Thacker
Case	?
RPI	Box	Music	Barry Coffing Robert Folk

    After a very poor fourth instalment, it is surprising that a fifth Police Academy movie made it to the big screen (or any screen for that matter). Coming a year after Citizens on Patrol comes Assignment: Miami Beach. Another surprise is that this movie improves on the previous, with more amusing moments throughout.

    Commandant Lassard is to be presented with the Police Officer of the Year award in Miami, and decides to invite all his favourites from the Academy along for the holiday. While out of their jurisdiction, they come in contact with a bumbling thief who accidentally has his bag switched with Lassard, losing all his newly acquired wealth. Lassard unknowingly foils their attempts at getting the bag back, until he himself is kidnapped, leaving it up to his squad to save the day.

    Strangely, some of the citizens from the last movie have become police officers all of a sudden, playing some of the main roles. Also, Lassard's nephew joins the team, played by Matt McCoy, being cast as a prankster while taking charge of the squad. He echoes Steve Guttenburg's role so much that I am led to believe that this was in fact written with Guttenburg in mind, just with a change of cast member and the rewriting of a few lines and names. He gets the girl, saves the day and plays a few pranks while he's at it.

    Keep an eye out for Rene Auberjonois as the bumbling criminal. You may remember him from such shows as Boston Legal, and more importantly Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

Video

    Just like Citizens on Patrol, this movie has a 1.33:1 fullscreen transfer (and is subsequently not 16x9 enhanced).

    It is interesting to note that the theatrical trailer is presented in widescreen, albeit not 16x9 enhanced, giving me a good opportunity to compare several scenes to see whether the movie is pan and scan or open matte - it would appear to be open matte. The scenes in the trailer (which look much better than the movie transfer by the way) appear to have been cropped at the top and bottom to create the intended original widescreen theatrical ratio.

    The transfer is not overly sharp, nor too soft. Edge enhancement is present, although not noticeable unless you actively go looking for it.

    Colours are acceptable, which is a pleasant surprise. There is a lot of bright blue water, lots of green in the swamps, and skin tones are also quite reasonable.

    There is copious dust and specks of dirt in this transfer, more so than in almost any other DVD transfer that I have seen.

    Subtitles are provided in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Arabic, Bulgarian, Romanian, English for the Hearing Impaired and Italian for the Hearing Impaired.

    There is no layer change, as the movie is short enough to fit onto a single layer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As per previous instalments in this series, present on this DVD are Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono audio tracks in English, French and Italian, all encoded at 192kbps.

    No real problems are evident with the soundtrack. Dialogue is easy to understand and in sync with the on-screen action (Michael Winslow excluded).

    There is no hissing, no pops and no dropouts.

    Being a mono soundtrack, surround and LFE activity is non-existent, with the centre speaker getting all the action.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Featurette - Mistaken Identity: Case Re-Opened - 7:41

    These featurettes are getting shorter as we proceed through the series. The only good thing is seeing the cast as they are now.

Theatrical Trailer - 1:22

    As mentioned in the video section, this trailer is presented widescreen at 1.75:1. It looks much much better than the movie. There are no video artefacts noticeable, and it has a very sharp image with excellent colour reproduction. If the movie was transferred to DVD as well as the trailer has been, it would get 4 stars across the board.

    Apart from NTSC and PAL differences, I would not pick one region over the other, apart from pricing and availability issues.

    Abysmal video transfer. Stock standard audio transfer. Extras not worth noting. Otherwise a better movie than the last, but showing signs of a tired formula.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall