Review of Top Secret! (1984) by Patrick B — 30 Jul 2014

What is this, an Abrahams/Zucker movie without a "Cigarette?", "Yes, I know." joke? While I was uneasy about watching one of these Abrahams/Zucker spoofs without Leslie Nielsen, Top Secret! more-or-less does what it is supposed to do: roast the hell out of spy movies.

But the problem with Top Secret!, and Airplane before it, and the Police Squad movies after it, is that an hour and a half is way too long to sustain momentum for this kind of humor. As great as Abrahams and Zucker are at their visual gags and absurd puns and conceptual maladies, it's a style of humor that wanes by the midway point.

And unfortunately the plot here is too mumbly, gumbly to provide much in the way of relief, which is a common problem with these Abrahams/Zucker movies. (And a big reason why their crowning achievement is the short-lived Police Squad! tv series; episodes are the perfect length to capture this style of humor.).

So instead of plot to relieve the non-ending gag reel, they use music. Which isn't a half-bad way of providing breaks scattered throughout the movie. With Val Kilmer proving to be a pretty convincing rock and roll star, his Elvis-slash-Beatles Mania-slash-Beach Boys thing goes over remarkably well. Therefore there are three minute segments that play out like a well-tuned music video than a nonsensical spy spoof.