"Mortuary Academy" is, if anything, actually less funny than its subject matter: two nerds inherit the "academy" of the title and, if I remember correctly, have to go to school there to get it.
The whole thing is very confusing and hard to follow, and never provides an adequate sense of place. It has several fantastic character actors with a magnetic screen presence, and no idea what to do with them, so after you get over the shock at seeing actors from "In the Heat of the Night", "The Silence of the Lambs" and "The Usual Suspects" in garbage like this, you eventually stop paying attention to them because they aren't given anything remotely interesting to do. The movie introduces them and then just kind of leaves them to their own devices.
Paul Bartel, the rotund, balding character actor who looks and sounds like he was put on Earth to quote Shakespeare, has the movie's only memorable character... trait. He's really not a memorable "character", per se, but how many movies, especially comedic films, are there about necrophiliacs? This is about the only material that could have been funny, and while it didn't get any laughs from me, I did guffaw in shock once or twice. Again, the movie just has no idea how to handle this potentially outrageous material; you probably won't even notice it because every leading up to it and following it is so boring.
The title, I assume, is an attempt to cash in on the success of "Police Academy". Say what you will about that movie, but at least police academies are actually something that exist. "Mortuary Academies" don't even seem to exist in this movie.
The whole thing is very confusing and hard to follow, and never provides an adequate sense of place. It has several fantastic character actors with a magnetic screen presence, and no idea what to do with them, so after you get over the shock at seeing actors from "In the Heat of the Night", "The Silence of the Lambs" and "The Usual Suspects" in garbage like this, you eventually stop paying attention to them because they aren't given anything remotely interesting to do. The movie introduces them and then just kind of leaves them to their own devices.
Paul Bartel, the rotund, balding character actor who looks and sounds like he was put on Earth to quote Shakespeare, has the movie's only memorable character... trait. He's really not a memorable "character", per se, but how many movies, especially comedic films, are there about necrophiliacs? This is about the only material that could have been funny, and while it didn't get any laughs from me, I did guffaw in shock once or twice. Again, the movie just has no idea how to handle this potentially outrageous material; you probably won't even notice it because every leading up to it and following it is so boring.
The title, I assume, is an attempt to cash in on the success of "Police Academy". Say what you will about that movie, but at least police academies are actually something that exist. "Mortuary Academies" don't even seem to exist in this movie.