TOP SECRET (1984)

TOP SECRET (1984)

Tagline: Movie? What movie?

(Comedy, Espionage, Spoof) [PG]

Listen to me, Hillary. I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island, who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground. – Nick

I know. It all sounds like some bad movie. – Hillary

In this one, Nick Rivers is an American rock star who ends up falling in love with Hillary Flammond while in Germany. It doesn’t take long before he finds out she’s involved in the French Underground and they are trying to rescue her captured father. 

First off this movie is a full-blown comedy. There is nothing serious about it, so if you are trying to follow the plot, remember, it’s just a crazy comedy spoof of old Elvis and WWII movies. It’s not meant to be some mind-bending art film like all of the other critically acclaimed masterpieces Val Kilmer is in. Kidding….I’m kidding, go grab this review out of the trash and finish it. I will try to keep the clowning around to a minimum for the rest of this review.

I was fortunate enough to watch this thing as a kid. It was a time when PC wasn’t even a thing yet and seemingly no one my age was offended by anything. If you were, you sure as hell just sucked it up because you weren’t a pansy. That should be your first clue that this movie is pretty balls to the wall unashamed of itself. It frankly just doesn’t even care. It takes place in the 1940’s so also keep that in mind as well. There are also a ton of Nazis in this, but the filmmakers only show 1 actual swastika in the entire movie, which helps keep this thing a lot more light-hearted and goofy than you would think.

Acting-wise Val Kilmer ends up looking like a comedic genius. I mean, he’s incredible in this and this is actually the movie that made me like him as an actor. TOP GUN nearly ruined that for me, but I couldn’t stand him for most of that movie. Lucy Gutteridge plays Hillary in this and she is also pretty hilarious, but she wasn’t in any other projects I recognized. She was in the British horror, comedy TV series TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, which is something I may check out at some point. This movie also had some brief Peter Cushing scenes. He plays the dude at the bookstore with the giant eye (seen in the previews). Cushing was well known for his catalog of horror films but is most famous as Grand Moff Tarkin in STAR WARS. His likeness was also CGI’d into ROGUE ONE and we also see a younger version of the character in REVENGE OF THE SITH. I also thought Harry Ditson (best known for ANGEL HAS FALLEN) stood out in this as Du Quois. 

While this movie does have a story, but it’s mostly joke after joke. If you liked AIRPLANE or KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE this one is going to definitely be in your wheelhouse. For me, like with those movies, some of the jokes are a bit crass and some miss the mark, but the majority are actually pretty gut-busting funny. Again, this was back when humor was allowed and not everything was so freakin serious. One tidbit is that when you see this film advertised it almost always (no not in my graphic, but most of them) has a cow wearing boots on the poster. Apparently in real life cows hate stuff on their feet, so the filmmakers had to cut the bottoms of the boots off and Velcro them on to keep the cows from losing their minds. 

Your enjoyment of this film will likely have to do with your age and sensibilities but for me, this is a near-perfect comedy and lands at a 6 out of 7. It was in the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 500 movies nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF KINGSMERE PROPERTIES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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