The Michigan Daily-Saturday, June 21, 1980-Page 5 e a rts g m ,st+ :::its :s,', .";" ;: r ;;:;;'. "' i'}'f"' :,r k:iwav.." : %St :<*,.::." ":E:z ;or:x ": :<2 r:: :"str':#o: .:.,">:.: Yes, it's time to start worrying By ADAM KNEE The Mad magazine vehicle Up the Academy appears on the surface to have the makings of a racy, hilarious, socially conscious farce; it is directed by Robert Downey (known for such audacious social satire as Putney Swope), it has an "R" rating, which implies that its contents are in a dif- ferent league than the kid-stuff in the . magazine, and its advertising suggests an anti-war theme. But alas, the film is no more sophisticated or telling (or even funny) than the deteriorating magazine and is aimed directly toward the same ten-year-old audience. Up the Academy is far more a fun- loving kids versus repressive, corrupt adults stock film than any kind of pacifist work. Downey depicts in his brazen, unreal camp style the woes of four teenage boys who are sent to the Weinberg Military Academy against ;heir desires: Offspring of a profit- motivated black evangelist, an Italian mafia head, an Arab oil baron, and a Michigan mayor of questionable com- petence up for reelection. These young men must deal with the cunning, over- bearing, omnipresent Major Liceman (Ron Liebman), an instructor who once served at My Lai and whose appearan- ce is always presaged by cold gusts of wind and a huge, dark shadow. His students never have a moment of rest, and he goes to especially great pains to nake sure the Michigan. boy is kept away from a girlfriend. He gets his kicks by tying up women in parachute cord. THE MAJOR is at the center of the film's dramatic life, and this makes Ron Liebman's poor casting all the more unfortunate. It's not that he's a bad actor-he's simply too gentle in his manner and appearance to be very threatening; he is much more in place - as the union organizer in Norma Rae. The acting of the teenagers is, on the whole, over-exaggerated even for unreal comedy of this type, though Wendell Brown is quite likeable as the evangelist's son. Another memorable performance is given by Barbara Bach, possibly the film's biggest selling point, in the irrelevant role of a weapons in- structor who teaches with her blouse unbuttoned to her navel, handling shells and grenades with purely sexual relish. But Barbara Bach's breasts aren't S bared enough to give rise to an "R" rating. That results from a good deal of verbal obscenity and a supposedly humorous scence involving off-screen intercourse-nothing today's ten-year- olds don't know plenty about. Indeed, the adolescent audience this bomb is aimed for might welcome its ostensibly anti-establishment theme and its an- noying soundtrack of consistent AM- rock. The movie's humor rarely holds more sophistication than in its depic- tion of an elderly general who loses balance when he salutes too forcefully and has such resounding gas problems that those around him resort to oxygen masks, or. of a gay instructor who parades around all evening tucking the boys in and offering to wash their un- dergarments. If this were all there were to it, I could stop here and let Up the Academy pass as a relatively harmless children's comedy but there is more to it. The film presents itself as a pacifist work, but is absolutely does nothing to achieve this end and in'fact even contradictsthe very tenet it supposedly starts with. Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses have written a careless and ideologically irresponsible script which brings up many important issues but fails to follow through on any of them. IN THE FILM'S title sequence, row upon row of toy soldies fall in a chain reaction while Mad trademark Alfred E. Newman, decorated in military leader's garb, watches over all and gives his now-classic shrug of total in- difference. Surprisingly, the film never even touches on the futility of the mass slaughter brought on by war, and only briefly alludes to battle at all. Alar- mingly, one of the film's few serious sequences involves the parents wat- ching proudly on visitors' day as their sons perfom military exercises. Although Liceman occasionally resorts to violence, he is depicted as being evil because of his insidiousness and sexual perversity, rather than because of his military status. He tries to blackmail the Michigan boy into allowing him the sexual favors of his girlfriend with the threat of releasing photographs that would ruin his father's campaign. The boys them- selves, characters we are supposed to respect, fight back even more cun- ningly and less fairly than the Major. They manage to photograph the Major at a particularly embarrassing moment and then make a deal which involves the destruction of all pictures. Not only do they go back on their promises, they blow up their photograph and display it during visitors' day, sending the Major tum- bling into ruin. As though the eye-for-an-eye philoso- phy ween't inappropriate enough with respect to the pacifism stance this film supposedly supports, these young men take the whole head for an eye. The last shot, one of a demoted Liceman run- ning after the teenagers, who have driven off with his knapsack, is repeated again and again as a kind of cinematic revenge for repetitive drills he had forced on them earlier. In itself, the trick is amusing, but it does not comply with any attempted ideological atmosphere. ALL OF THE parents in Up the Academy are shown as corrupt and villainous, and their teenagers are vir- tuous and likeable by comparison. Does this suggest a message about a moral decay that comes with age? No, those empathetic characters all exhibit disheartening echoes of their parents' stereotypical behavior; the black cadet enjoys drugs and apparently has sex with each of his oft-replaced step- mothers, the Arab suffers from klep- tomania and ritually worships cans of motor oil, the Italian is just plain un- friendly, and the Michigan teenager is forever impregnating his girlfriend and wants to get the incriminating photographs of the act back not to save his father's election, but so that he won't lose out on a new sports car his father has promised him. Either this discrepancy is an oversight, which may very well be the case, or we are being told that these traits are inevitable and, hence, laughable. Both alternatives suggest a total lack of concern over the issues at hand on the part of the scrip- twriters. - Most distrubing are the implications of the presentation of the Arab boy. Early in the film, he launches a soccer ball into the air, probably in a rage at Liceman, and it lands on the Major's head. He puts an innocent look on his face and denies any part in the attack. We would forget about this if it weren't paralleled in an unusual, detached in- cident later on. It is the Arab's function to launch a rocket during the singing of the national anthem on visitors' day. To the horror of all present, when he does so the rocket totally demolishes a bridge. The spectators soon forget the incident, but not before catching a glimpse of his nervous, yet un- mistakabley defiant expression. We are at a loss as to exactly what to make of these incidents; the boy is likeable and relatively docile at other -times, and the destructive tendency that subverts these characteristics is not developed in any other way. Are Arabs supposed to be irretrievably disposed to war? Should one just laugh the bombings off without thinking, or what? See 'MAD', Page 8 Daily Photo by DAVID HARRIS Mandingo Griot Society This internationally flavored, unclassifiable group of musicians is shown here conducting a workshop at the Michigan Union Friday afternoon, before their concert there last night.