After starting the movie with little information going into it other than a recommendation by PBF, I thought that the opening scene had a very zany, almost Naked Gun-feel to it. Imagine my surprise when I learned in the credits that Top Secret was written and directed by none other than the once great, now not-so-much trio of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, or ZAZ for the motivationally challenged typists.
Having been a big fan of Airplane! and The Naked Gun! in my younger years it was a shock to learn of another movie in the vain of those aforementioned that I had only fleeting knowledge of its existence. That would be the equivalent to finding out George Romero had another zombie film in the 1970s, you know before he started sucking.
Skirting along on the daintiest of plots, Val Kilmer is very pretty here as Nick Rivers, an American pop singer who is summoned to perform in East Germany and goes on a haphazard journey before aligning with French revolutionaries who seek the country's downfall. As someone who is not a big fan of Elvis Presley and thus has never seen any movie he has been in, it took some reading up to discover that Top Secret is a parody of his films, I presume as the hunky heartthrob who launches into song at the drop of a hat, mixed with spy movies in general.
This mashup gives Abrahams and the brothers Zucker more than enough material to throw out jokes in dizzying frequency, much like their previous comical collaborations. The beauty is that the jokes here are not particularly germane to the plot nor do they even really make sense. But then again, certain shots like the random guy desperately running down a tree or Omar Sharif in a compacted car do not need relevancy or a great history behind them so long as they are funny. And Top Secret brings the funny.
While certain filmmakers of shitty "parody" movies (cough, Stan Helsing) are able to get the base formula for their movies down, if a parody is as funny as an average phone call to your cable company, someone has failed. Like their previous films, there is little that ZAZ will not do for a joke whether it is a physical, cultural-based, or just plain off-the-wall gag. My biggest complaint would be that this feels through and through like an 80s movie and while I understand the humor with most of the topical gags (like Montgomery Ward or Pinto), it dates the film moreso than the simple craziness from their other genre entries.
Certain parody movies get a pass on some fronts that normally go into analyzing a film. Is the plot believable? Nope, but it doesn't really matter much. Are there grade-A actors who can really sell the nuances of their characters? Again, no and watching such a movie looking for deep character moments and compelling drama is missing the point. Granted, Val Kilmer may not be known for his comedic strengths but he is able to carry things on very well in a manner that is surprisingly honest with just a hint of factiousness.
So while Top Secret may be more dated than some of its 80s brethren, it is still quite enjoyable in a random kind of way.
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