Top Secret! is a largely forgotten film by the creative team of Zucker, Abrams and Zucker, best known for their 1980 movie Airplane! which is basically the platonic ideal of the movie spoof. Where Airplane! satirized the disaster movie generally, and in particular the Airport movie franchise of the 1970's, Top Secret! is an odd amalgamation of genera types to send up, its the World War II escape/ espionage film combined with the 'Elvis movie'. Val Kilmer in his first film role plays Nick Rivers, an American rock star who travels to East Berlin as part of a cultural festival, a cultural festival that is being used by elements of the East German high command as a distraction against the forth coming deployment of a new supper weapon with the intent to devastate the NATO fleet off of Gibraltar and re-unite Germany under communist rule. Rivers get's sucked into event after meeting a young woman (Lucy Gutteridge) who is searching for her abducted scientist father (Michael Gough) and the couple end up working with "The French Resistance" to try and break him out.
The movie is quite funny, its got some great gages in it, especially visual ones, a lot of loony stuff with forced perspective and cartoon logic. The song's in the movie are also quite entertaining. While PG it would be rated PG-13 if it came out today, there are a few moments in it that would make me uncomfortable showing it to younger kids. On the whole though Top Secret! gets the genera spoof right, the story should be one that would work reasonable well as a mediocre straight movie, and the jokes well executed and legitimately funny, not just a string of recent pop culture references, a rut the genera fell into in the 00's that has basically killed it. A nice throw back viewing experience. ***
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