Grade:  B+
Comedy
Rated PG (just more like PG-13)

In 1987, when I interviewed David Zucker—ane of the trio responsible for inflicting not-terminate gags on movie audiences in such zany satires as Airplane! and The Naked Gun— Zucker, brother Jerry, and Jim Abrahams were basking in the success of Ruthless People. Just they were too thinking a great bargain about what made Aeroplane! a run(a)way success and wondering why Top Secret! and their short-lived Police Squad TV series weren't as popular with audiences.

Cult favorite
"The problem with Top Clandestine! was that the story wasn't strong enough, even though the jokes were probably funnier than Airplane! or Ruthless People, and many of the scenes were far more clever," Zucker said.  "Nosotros were very much in tune with the jokes, but the characters weren't very well-adult. Nosotros just used them to spout these jokes. The other matter is, information technology really wasn't a readily identifiable concept.  The idea of a stone 'due north' whorl vocalizer who goes to Eastward Germany to fight what seem to exist Nazis is kind of an esoteric concept. It was surrealism, and intended to be surrealistic"—which is why Top Secret!, though not a mainstream hitting, has achieved a kind of cult status amid one-act fans who savor the trio's listen-boggling juxtapositions and the fashion the actors somehow manage to maintain deadpan faces as they evangelize those deliciously funny lines. As Zucker explained, "With our style, the writers are the funny characters. When people watch our movies, they're aware that somebody had to write this stuff."

Val Kilmer, in his debut film, does a kingly job of spoofing Elvis as pop vocalizer Nick Rivers, whom the American government sends to an East German cultural festival instead of the requested Leonard Bernstein. Elvis fans will revel in a scene where Nick sings at a banquet and suddenly has all the oldsters grooving and the kitchen help dancing in the doorway, waving their spatulas. It happens once again at a teen pizza parlor hangout in a scene that calls to mind any number of Elvis films. In fact, there was probably enough Elvis material for the trio to stick with those gags and keep on parodying till nosotros're all spoofed upward. But they added some other whole layer of satire on war movies and the Cold War.

How silly can you become?
Even more surreal than having WWII-uniformed Nazis in East Germany, at that place'south the inexplicable presence of the French Resistance trying to thwart those goose-stepping evil-doers on the east side of the Berlin wall. Lucy Gutteridge, a ringer for a young Donna Reed, plays Hillary, the Elvis-flick dryad in distress whose professor-male parent is beingness held by the Germans and forced to work in their laboratory. Agents trying to detect him fail, and i of them (Omar Sharif in a rare one-act advent) suffers a fate worse than the Edsel. Nick gets involved and becomes a target of the (top) secret police and afterwards hooks upwardly with the Resistance, led by The Torch (Christopher Villiers)—who turns out to be an old flame of Hillary's. He was her commencement dear, in fact, recounted for us in a hilarious parody of The Blueish Lagoon, during which the young lovers detect "strange feelings" and build suburban-style housing out of "seaweed and snot." Bonanza is also briefly spoofed, as are lesbian lawn tennis players, white basketball players, Eastward German language female Olympians, national anthems, and the Beach Boys' surfin' U.s. craze.

The melody of the hilarious Eastward High german anthem sung in this movie was actually the hymn from Shorewood High Schoolhouse (near Milwaukee), the Zuckers' alma mater. During his concert appearance, Nick sings "How Dizzy Tin You Get," which could serve as the picture show's anthem. Jokes range from clever film allusions and witty one-liners to sophomoric sight gags where, for example, a behemothic statue of a pigeon in the park is visited by flying miniature humans who country on information technology, or a freedom fighter throws himself on a grenade and all of his comrades around him are blown up while he remains intact.

Still i of their best comedies
Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker were being entirely too hard on themselves. Moviegoers may not take been ready for a wild one-act concept pic like this in 1984, simply Top Secret! has since gotten high marks from Rottentomatoes critics and viewers (75 and fourscore percent "fresh") and earned a solid 7.2/10 at IMDB.com. Fans of Airplane! and The Naked Gun should be glad to add this one to their collections because it's the aforementioned fashion of expansive rapid-burn down comedy and close to the same caliber as those two top-rated jokefests. It's certainly funny enough for repeat play. The ballet scene lonely is hysterical.

Simply be advised that there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and addictively quotable lines. Your kids will probably start repeating some of the gags, every bit when Hillary says "I know a little German . . ." spoken in conversation most the linguistic communication barrier, just then speedily adds, pointing to a brusk human being wearing lederhosen, ". . . he's sitting over in that location."

Zucker said that they devised their rapid-burn brand of comedy when they created Kentucky Fried Theater equally college students in Madison, Wis. Since it was a low-budget affair and they had to perform their own textile, they didn't want to stand onstage and NOT get laughs. They plant information technology was easier to go on an audience laughing than to try to offset them up once again. Not all of the gags are successful, simply when they come at yous equally fast as they do, you're decumbent to laugh. That was the plan, and it seems to piece of work.

If you watch it with younger viewers, you might first with a formula Elvis motion-picture show or 2.

Top Secret! releases on May 17, but Amazon is selling it for $fourteen.99 as of today.

Entire family:  Not really (10 and older?)
Run time: ninety min. Color
Aspect ratio:  1.85:i Widescreen
Featured sound:  DTS-HDMA 5.1
Studio/Distributor:  Paramount
Includes:  Blu-ray, Digital Code
Trailer
Amazon link
Rated PG in 1984 just would be PG-13 today for some stiff linguistic communication, nudity, and sexual situations/innuendo

Language:  4/10—Fewer than two handsful of four-letter words, and no f-bombs

Sex activity:  7/ten—Some frontal nudity, sexual situations, innuendo, and sex-talk, only no worse than Airplane! or The Naked Gun; a cow feeds off the udder of a human in the back end of a cow costume and he acts a bit orgasmic; the opening sequence laughs are based in part on a woman'due south large breasts; an plainly naked (nothing disquisitional is shown) homo and woman are seen kissing and it's implied they are having sexual practice; a bizarre sex toy chosen the Anal Intruder turns upwards in one scene; male person ballet dancers take rather large below-the-waist bulges; a woman sees a man in loincloth and measures him, off-camera; a topless woman is seen on a calendar

Violence:  2/ten—There are fights and grenades and war scenes but everything is played for laughs and goose egg much is shown

Adult situations:  2/10—Wine is served at a restaurant, at that place's some smoking, a joke fabricated about a "tampon factory," and Nick sings a romantic/suggestive song to a very young teenage daughter

Takeaway: Summit Secret! may be at the top of my Virtually Underrated Films of All Time list. It's quite funny . . . still