Feds Reviews

Not screened for critics, dumped on the market shortly before the rash of Christmas films, and pulled from theaters one week later, FEDS was one of 1988's phantom releases. The script by coproducer Len Blum and first-time director Dan Goldberg (both part of the team that wrote MEATBALLS and STRIPES) combines the POLICE ACADEMY formula with the standard buddy movie format, then does a gender switch, making the green recruits females. De Mornay, a dim-but-athletic ex-Marine, and Gross, a meek, bookish type, are roommates at the FBI Academy, where they are subjected to the taunts of the sexist male recruits. Since both are on the verge of flunking out--De Mornay because she can't pass the written exams and Gross because she can't handle the physical requirements--the women team up to battle each other's weakness. In the film's climax, they take the academy's final test, a simulated crime exercise they must pass if they are to become FBI agents. A predictable, inoffensive, mildly amusing effort, with De Mornay and Gross struggling mightily to wring some spontaneity from the mundane material.