Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy (often shortened to Up the Academy) is a 1980 American comedy film directed by Robert Downey Sr. and starring Wendell Brown, Tommy Citera, Ron Leibman, Harry Teinowitz, Hutch Parker, Ralph Macchio, Tom Poston, King Coleman, and Barbara Bach. The plot concerns the antics of a group of cadets at a military school.
Plot
Four troublemaking young men are assigned to Weinberg Military Academy as punishment for their antics:, Chooch, the heir to an organized crime family; Ike, a faith healer's son; Hash, the son of an Arab sheik; and Oliver, whose governor father is up for re-election. In charge over these new recruits is sadistic Major Vaughn Liceman. Three of the four new recruits establish themselves as troublemakers from the start, but Chooch wants to go straight and focuses on his studies. Short time after they are joined by a new roommate, Rodney, who was expelled from other schools because of his pyromaniac tendencies.
When Oliver's girlfriend from back home, Candy, ends up enrolled at a nearby girls military school, the recruits plot to sneak out. They succeed, but when they return they find that Liceman knows about everything and even has compromising pictures of Oliver and Candy, which he threatens to use to damage the Governor's re-election bid. The boys assume Chooch is the snitch, but he discovers Rodney is the guilty party. In retaliation, the boys hatch a new plan to get dirty photos of Liceman with Candy, and retrieve the original blackmail photos.
The counter-blackmail plan takes place during the academy's soccer game. In the midst of the action, Rodney repents his actions and launches a rocket that destroys Liceman's cabin. The academy wins the soccer game, and the blackmail plot is foiled. The movie ends with Liceman chasing Ike, Oliver, Hash, Chooch, Candy, and Rodney while Liceman yells "play it again", playing the scene three times as