MOVIE REVIEW : ‘PRINCESS ACADEMY’: LOW JINKS

The people who made the first “Police Academy” have a lot to answer for. That fluke hit of 1984 triggered three atrocious sequels and a flourishing genre of “idiot-occupational” comedies. And these movies have resulted in widespread disrespect, scorn and ridicule for local authority figures. (We’re talking about film makers here, not police officers.)

“The Princess Academy” (which opened citywide Friday) is only the latest in this sorry, scatological string--and it’s not even remotely the best.

The movie takes place in an ultra-exclusive finishing school in some unspecified snowy locale. There the obese, crazed Fraulein Stickenschmidt--or was it “Stinkenschmidt?”--working for an apparently myopic countess (Eva Gabor), holds sadistic sway over a bevy of rich young Americans and Europeans. These lissome lovelies sport wild wardrobes and wilder accents: all the way from ersatz Monty Python twit to “Oo-la-la, come weez me, babee!” French.

Money is the only password here: Mafia princesses and oil-rich Texans cavort with the cafe society--and stirring things up is the academy’s one scholarship student, poor Cindy (Lar Park Lincoln).

Is “Princess Academy” (rated R) a Cinderella story, a satire of snobbery, or just another lamebrained collection of bodily function jokes? All three targets are missed, with miles to spare. Heroine Cindy has no personality; she’s just a pretty victim. Neither do her classmates; they’re just a collection of accents. And, since the movie has a mixed fannish-mocking attitude toward all this privilege--if this is satire, it’s starry-eyed--all the villainy is concentrated in two British snobs and Fraulein Stickenschmidt, who acts as if she’s hot after the role of Goering in a revival of “Springtime for Hitler.”

Kent Wakeford’s cinematography is surprisingly tony and delicate for a raunchfest like this, Sid Caesar’s “Gold Card Rap” credit song is burpily amusing, and the academy’s princesses are all knockouts. But the script may set a record for unfunny jokes: There are virgins learning to fake orgasms, and a rich Arab sheik chasing everyone through a bordello, an outhouse on skis, itching powder during a class address--and, as the piece de resistance, we have horse manure wrapped up in a pate and served to the snob. (Shelley Pielou deserves the acting palm here, simply for enduring this.)

What we don’t have are laughs. Not one. And this is no joke. (Seriously.) But perhaps we learn how they’re manufactured, if at all, in the next example of this riotous genre: “Producer’s Academy”--where the daffy, goofy, sex-crazed guys take over Hollywood.