Customer Reviews

Top Secret! (Widescreen)

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This film was done by the same people who made "Airplane" and the "Police Squad" movies. I enjoy this film more. It is just as silly as the others, if not more so. I think the jokes work better in this film.

The film takes place in some unnamed East German-like country. The time is something between today, the 50s, the 40s and somewhere in between. It parodies teen rock-and-roll movies, french resistance films, Blue Lagoon and a bunch of other stuff thrown in for good measure. Val Kilmer plays a rock-and-roll teen idol named Nick Rivers. He gets involved with a bunch of resistance fighters in a represive soviet block country that plans on taking over the world. Funnier than it sounds. Surreal comedy at its best. (The guard falling off the castle wall is one of my favorite gags.)

How can you argue with a movie that starts with a Beach Boys parody called "Skeet Surfing"? ...

Good fun, just - for me at least - not quite up to the lunatic genius level of `Airplane!' (which was created by the same team),
with more dull patches, or jokes that don't quite work. But where it's funny, it's very funny. Certainly worth a look if you've never seen it.

YEAHHHH!!!!!!!! this movie is flat-out FUNNAY! It's about this "American Rock 'n Roll Star" (kilmer) who helps a German girl find her father along with some pretty kewl cats. This movie has awesome not-obvious jokes and quotes you'll seriously LOVE until your dying day.

Top Secret! - the Jim Abrahams/Zucker Bros.' follow-up to Airplane! - does for (or is that *to*) Elvis movies and WWII espionage films what the earlier feature did for/to the airborne disaster genre. The gags are slightly more immature (not necessarily a bad thing, but in some cases may have been better had they been allowed to age a little before being put into production), but some, like the forced-perspective oversize phone or saying farewell to the Scarecrow, rival anything the ZAZ team has ever done.

The music is a mixed bag. "Skeet Surfing" and the Macy's jingle are great. "Tutti-Fruitti" and "Straighten the Rug" are less so (not that every song in an Elvis movie was worthy of screen time, either). Kudos to Val Kilmer, though; even when he's camping it up, the musical numbers remain watch- and listenable.

The only thing I don't care for on the disc is the audio commentary. The production team really rips the movie apart as if they had tried to make a "serious" film that fell apart. In that case, learning why/how it failed would be interesting and instructive. To shred a spoof film, especially a sophomore and sophomoric effort like Top Secret!, is entirely unwarranted. Sure there are plot holes. Sure it makes no sense that submarine would crash into a prison dungeon. Sure some things are only mildly amusing. Drawing undue attention to them is doubly pointless. Sheesh! If you're a big fan, skip the commentary.

I really enjoyed this movie and really (mostly) enjoyed its presentation on the DVD. There aren't a lot of extras, but be sure to hunt for the Easter Egg - it's definitely worth finding.

Besides being a little dated, this ecclectic comedy mixes spoofs, satire and every possible form of visual humour and adds up to a hilarious film that bases its strength in never letting the viewer rest.
Some visual gags are place in the background and need repeated views to be found, and enjoyed (like a statue shaped as a pigeon where humans stand on).
One example of the wacky sense of humour of this film is that the scene where Hillary and Nick go into the Swedish bookstore was staged, shot and then run backwards to make the dialog sound sweedish.
If you like movies like Airplane and Naked guns series you will have a little feast with this less known movie.
Watch for a young Val Kilmer in the leading role and a great cameo by Omar Shariff.

Top Secret! is a hilarious movie from the makers of airplane. The jokes are so funny you'll puke. The visual humor is also extremely great. All acting is great and an all around great DVD to own.

I absolutely LOVE this movie, with some of the most ingenius sight gags in movie history (the train station is my personal favorite, followed closely by the Swedish bookstore). It was nice to hear an audio commentary from all three directors, though I didn't care for "moderator" Fred Rubin.

I'm hard to impress these days, having seen too many movies to be mindblown by them anymore, but "Top Secret" had me collapsed on the sofa. The point here is the gags, not the plot. I can't believe how underrated this movie is, and would encourage everyone to give it a shot.

I saw this movie before that's why i'm buy it now, one of the first Val Kilmer movie...If you like stupid comedy, i mean free comedy...hehe its a kind of "hot shot" movie, remeber these funny film...promess you'll like this one..Same for whom who speak french...

I've been a fan of the ZAZ team for as long as I can remember. And this is one of their classic films- Top Secret! spoofs both Elvis musicals and doubleya-doubleya two films- and does it really well. There's sight gags, background gags, puns, a scene shot entirely in reverse, an underwater saloon fight, what else do you want in a movie? I've watched Top Secret! on a regular basis for 15 years, whether it's the version I taped off of TV or the DVD, and am still not bored with it. I always find some new gag that somehow escaped me in previous viewings. While Top Secret! isn't as well known as Airplane!, it's just as hilarious. Watching it with the commentary is not advised- it's quite possibly the worst commentary track I've come across and it's mostly just a bunch of guys laughing. A note- the "alternate scenes" featured in the DVD were re-inserted for the TV version of the movie.

Very funny movie! Even funnier if you know some German because almost everything the Germans say in this movie sounds perfectly German - but it isn't.