Police Academy

Police Academy Movie Poster

"The new police recruits.  Call them slobs, call them jerks, call them gross...just don't call them when you're in trouble".  There was a total of six Police Academy movies made from 1984 to 1989, and a few more post 1980's.  Focusing on the original, Police Academy was released in 1984, and starred Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney, Kim Cattrall as Karen Thompson, Bubba Smith as Moses Hightower, and G.W. Bailey as Thaddeus Harris.  Although the movie received mixed reviews, it was a huge financial success.

In the movie, a shortage of police officers forces the mayor to effect a policy that essentially accepted any warm blooded human wanting to join the police academy (for example, Mahoney is forced to join the academy or face jail time).  Not everyone likes the new lower standards, including Lt. Harris (Bailey), who intends on making the recruit's lives so miserable that they voluntarily quit.

In the end, the misfits become friends and band together to become legit police officers, regardless of the misery they are put through.  Towards the end of the movie, Mahoney and Hightower manage to get themselves kicked out, but after proving themselves during a real world riot situation, the Academy reinstates them, graduates all of them, and hands out special medals.  In the end, they earn Harris' respect.